Invisible Monsters
by skullanddog
Summary: Roll up roll up for life and death and all things slimy on the icy slopes of planet Beta!
1. Rose

Rose sat, huddled in the cave. Outside, it was starting to snow.

Rose watched, shivering in her soaking clothes, the first feathery flakes drifting through the twilight sky. Her expression was bitter.

It seemed impossible that only that morning she had been missing Winter. Wanting it to snow. Begging the Doctor to take them somewhere they could ski. He'd caved in, as he always did, grinning and blushing and feigning annoyance.

Christ, the Doctor. Rose's stomach lurched sickeningly when she thought of him. Where was he? Was he even alive? She had no idea. She wasn't even sure when she'd lost him, just that it had been somewhere along that hellish mountain path, while they strained to keep ahead of the creatures hunting them...

Rose shuddered again. At least the creatures had gone, she thought. But it was a small comfort. They'd only left when, snarling and snapping, they realised they couldn't worm their long bodies into the cave to reach her.

But the cave was shallow and cramped, probably the burrow of some small mammal. Rose doubted she would be able to spend the night in there. And then...what then? She had no way of telling if the creatures were waiting outside for her.

And what if the Doctor was alive? What if he needed her? He could be lying unconscious at the bottom of a ravine, for all she knew, or being torn apart by those creatures.

Rose sobbed, forgetting her resolve not to cry. She had to think of a way out. She had to find the Doctor. Night was falling, and the hours before the cold overwhelmed her were numbered. She had to think fast.

With tears falling silently down her cheeks, Rose thought back to that morning.

xxx xxx xxx

_A/N: Just wondering if anyone thinks this would make for an interesting story.  
Please let me know! This is a democracy, after all!_


	2. Snow

_**A/N: **Many thanks to those who reviewed the first chapter, and encouraged me to write more.  
If this sucks, blame them.  
Just kidding. Flames will only grill my chicken faster._

xxx xxx

"What _are_ you doing?"

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder as Rose stomped into his bedroom, hands on hips. He grinned at her from the wardrobe, and she glowered back.

"What are you dressed like that for?" he wondered, ignoring her question.

Rose growled. She was in her pajamas, and not without reason. It was five am, TARDIS relative time, and she'd been sleeping peacefully when a loud bang had woken her.

"I was sleeping," she frowned at him, "Like every normal person is at five in the morning. I came to see what all the racket was about."

"I just thought I'd organise my books," the Doctor said, still smiling, "You know how it is. First Roman literature gets mixed in with the Medieval poetry, then Calculus A gets put in the box with Hylix System Languages, and then before you know it you've got fossils in with your physics and War History alongside holiday trash. Complete disaster."

"Books?" Rose fumed, "Books! What, are they tin plated or somethin'?"

Judging from the noise, they ought to have been.

"No, no, no," the Doctor shook his head, and gestured to a disorderly pile of what can best be described as 'crap', "I had to get some things out of the way, first."

Rose turned her glare to the pile. It looked more than capable of providing the racket which had roused her, and she was about to dismiss it as noxious junk when something caught her eye.

"Is that a toboggan?" she demanded, not daring to examine the object herself lest it dissolved beneath her fingers.

"An old earth one, yeah." the Doctor said, "Rubbish, really. It doesn't even have a turbo."

"It looks fine to me." Rose said. She pulled the toboggan out of the pile. It was old, and heavy, but beautifully made. The sculpted steel frame was painted azure, and the pine bottom was a creamy yellow.

"Have you ever used it?" she asked the Doctor, who was watching her carefully while chewing on the arm of his spectacles.

"Of course not. When would I ever have time to use a toboggan?" he scoffed.

Rose grinned at him, disrupted sleep forgotten. "What about today? You haven't got anything planned. We could go to the snow!"

"I'll have you know I'm extremely busy today. Sorting out these books, you know." the Doctor told her, still chewing.

"Oh, come on! I missed the last two Winters back home, 'cause I've been travelling around with you. It's only fair you should make it up to me." Rose said, pouting at him.

"But the books..."

"I'll love you forever if you take me." and she gave him her most irresistible smile.

The Doctor gulped, and licked his lips.

"Maybe they could wait until tomorrow." he said, voice hoarse, "And I suppose I do owe it to you."

Rose squealed, and tackled him to the bed in an emphatic bear hug.

"This is gonna be great! I love the snow!" she giggled, and kissed him on the cheek, "You are going to _love_ tobogganing!"

The Doctor was blushing furiously, "Alright, alright. You better get changed. I know just the place we can go."

Rose pulled back from him, puzzled, "We're not going to London?"

"God, no. There's millions of better places to see snow than London." the Doctor told her, struggling to his feet.

"Like where? Scotland? France? Antarctica?" Rose guessed.

"Even better. Planet Beta."

Rose followed the Doctor as he made his way out to the TARDIS' control room.

"Where's planet Beta? I never even heard of it." she asked when he didn't elaborate.

"It's in the Beta system. It's sort of a blue print planet," seeing Rose was about to question him further, he added, "The creators used it to trial things before putting them on earth. Animals, diseases, that sort of thing. Of course, we'll go back a few million years to when it was uninhabited."

"Creators?"

The Doctor nodded, "They call themselves that. They didn't really _create_ earth, with all the mountains and oceans and such, but they occasionally fiddle with it. Shaping humanity's destiny, that sort of thing. A real nosy, interfering bunch."

"And it's good for tobogganing?" Rose asked, suspicious.

"The best. Beta has the biggest, coldest mountains in the universe. It has the heaviest snowfall. The atmosphere is almost identical to earth's, but it doesn't thin out as quickly with alititude, so we should have no trouble breathing."

"And you're sure it's uninhabited?" she asked, reluctant to spend another weekend being chased by slobbering aliens.

The Doctor had turned to tinker with the control panel. He was starting to look excited, humming to himself and gnawing on his mangled spectacles.

"Doctor." Rose taped his shoulder, "Are you sure it's uninhabited?"

"It ought to be." the Doctor replied, typing the planet's co-ordinates into the computer, "We're visiting it's prehistoric era."

He finished typing, and glanced up at Rose.

"Well, go on, then." he said to her, "You're not going to wear your pajamas tobogganing, are you?"

She gave him one last apprehensive glance, and headed for her room.

xxx

"Bloody hell."

In her cave, Rose was coughing. Despite the Doctor's earlier assurances, she was having a hard time breathing. The air was thick with fog and the threat of a blizzard.

And God, it was cold. Her clothes were drenched, and clung wetly to her. To her horror, the first icy crystals of a frost were beginning to form on her pants leg.

"I've got to get out of here." Rose said. She'd been talking to herself, finding it kept her spirits up, for the last hour while she watched the night blossom.

The snow was falling thick and fast now. Rose was running out of reasons to not leave the cave. She knew she couldn't survive in there, but there was a great fear, a black pit in her stomach, of what lay outside.

Those creatures, with their long, almost skeletal heads, and pale bodies, were enough to scare even the most hardened time traveler. Even the Doctor had been short of praise for them.

With the events of that morning still playing in her mind, Rose crawled stiffly towards the narrow mouth of the cave.

The world that greeted her outside was a frozen hell.

xxx

What Rose saw that morning when she stepped out of the TARDIS took her breath away.

"Better than London, huh?" the Doctor said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

"It's beautiful!" Rose replied, mouth agape, "It's bloody fantastic!"

The TARDIS sat in a small, snowy alcove about half way up the most rugged mountain Rose had ever seen. To her right, the slope continued its ascent to the clouds, rising in sheer faced cliffs and craggy outcrops, to form a jagged horn of black rock hundreds of metres above her head.

To her left, the ground dropped away with dizzying suddenness, sloping sharply downwards, down and down and down, before jerking upwards again in another fractured cliff. In the steep, zigzagging ravine between the mountains, Rose could just make out an icy-crusted river.

"Well, let's not just stand here all day." the Doctor said. He'd traded his beloved brown coat for a hooded jacket that was lined with wool, but stubbornly refused to change his joggers for snow boots.

Rose, on the other hand, was wearing every item of Winter clothing she'd been able to find in the TARDIS. Which was a lot, but she doubted it would be enough to provide padding in case she slipped and fell off the side of the mountain.

"Are we taking that path?" she wondered, pointing a gloved finger at a narrow, snow covered ledge that wound around the mountain side.

"You're a silly old hen, Rose." the Doctor grinned, "Of course we're taking that path. There's no elevator, you know, not like on your London mountains."

Rose shook her head. She didn't even know where to start correcting him with that one.

In the end, she decided it was hopeless, and said instead, "You can lead the way."

"I knew you would say that." the Doctor told her, but he went ahead nonetheless, dragging the toboggan behind him.

_Look_, Rose said to herself, _there's bits sticking out of this mountain everywhere. Probably if I slip, I'll just land safely on another ledge._

_Yeah right_, said the more cynical, and honest, part of her brain.

The Doctor was still talking, strolling along the stubby ledge as though it was an ordinary footpath, "The other side of the mountain is flat. Diagonal, of course, but flat. We're well above the tree line here, so there shouldn't be any obstacles to run into."

Rose wasn't really listening. She was terrified. She didn't believe for a second that she would survive a fall, and the path was rising steeply. Maybe tobogganing hadn't been such a great idea, after all.

"It's about ten minutes to flat side." the Doctor was saying, "That alcove back there is the only flat surface big enough to park the TARDIS. It'd just slide away anywhere else."

Somewhere between ten minutes and ten hours later (or so it felt), when the pair reached the end of the path, Rose let go of her misgivings. The far side of the mountain was perfect. The slope was smooth and gradual, the snow covering undisturbed.

The landscape shone like diamonds, glistening below a sapphire sky.

Noticing the look on her face, the Doctor queried, "Do you love me yet?"

"I love this mountain!" Rose squealed, snatching the toboggan's lead from his hand.

With it in tow, she took off up the slope. Her boots sunk a foot and more through the surface before the snow compacted, but even that hardly slowed her.

"When I catch you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor shouted, trying vainly to keep up with her, "You know what I'm going to do to you?"

Rose glanced back at him, and grinned, "When you catch me, Doctor, you can do whatever you like!"

Although she would never admit it, even to herself, Rose adored the Doctor. Her face flushed at his words. Maybe later she would slow down enough for him to catch her. Maybe.

Before her, the mountain seemed to go on forever. Far, far in the distance, she could see the peak. From this side, it appeared to have been loped off short, so the top was flat.

"I've got you now!" the Doctor shouted, lunging for her. Somehow, even in his battered joggers, he'd managed to catch up.

Rose ducked away from him, and grabbed the toboggan in both hands. She spun in the snow, turning downhill, and leapt into the toboggan.

"That's cheating!" the Doctor shouted.

"Better luck next time, ey?" Rose called back to him.

The toboggan picked up speed quickly, hissing through the crisp snow. Rose screamed with the sheer thrill of the ride. She tipped the toboggan to go faster, and only very reluctantly brought it to a stop when she reached a jutting barrier of rocks.

"Bloomin' heck." Rose said, glancing back up the slope. She must have covered two hundred metres or more. If she was careful, and steered around the rocks, she could have kept going for another half mile.

"Maybe next time." she told herself, and headed back up the slope.

By the time she'd trudged all the way back to the Doctor, Rose was sweating, and more than glad to give her companion a go of the toboggan.

"Er," he said, holding the device awkwardly in one hand, "It looks quite simple, really."

"Just push it along the ground, and jump on." Rose panted, letting herself fall back into the snow, "I'm sure you'll manage."

"Er. Alright."

The Doctor retreated a few metres further up the slope. After a handful of deep breaths, he pushed the toboggan along in front of him, trying to mimic Rose's actions. He broke into a run, still pushing the toboggan.

"Get on!" Rose shouted, rising up on one elbow to watch him.

He got on. Or, at least, he attempted to. At the last, critical moment, he let go of the toboggan. The lead rope, still wrapped around his hand, jerked to the right, and the toboggan followed, slipping sharply from beneath him.

"Save me, Rose!" the Doctor cried, tumbling head first into the snow.

He probably would have been alright _if_ he hadn't rolled. He did roll, though, round and round and round, until at last he crashed bodily into a snow bank. The toboggan, dragged along all the way, ploughed straight into him.

"Are you alright?" Rose called down to him, her words muffled with laughter.

She about to get to her feet, ready to run down and help him, when a dark shadow fell over her.

Rose looked up. And screamed.

A gaping skull screamed back at her.

xxx xxx

_Is this okay? It seems okay to me, but you never know.  
Christ, when did I get so freaking insecure? I blame society for this._


	3. Monsters

_**A/N: ** To everyone who reviewed...thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Really. Thank you._

_I think this chapter turned out okay. Thank you._

xxx xxx

"N-nice m-m-monster."

The creature snarled in reply. Its skeletal head was almost human, but elongated to the point of mutilation. Close in appearance to a canine skull. Clumps of dark hair clung to the back of the skull, yellow eyes glistened from within the black muscles behind its eye sockets. The teeth were long and thin, like needles, and the mouth shone red with gore.

"Rose! Are you okay?" the Doctor's voice was distant. He was fifty yards or more down the slope.

Rose didn't dare answer. The creature circled her, exposed ribcage swelling and shrinking with each breath, body all the more obscene for its mockery of humanity.

"Coee! Rose!"

The creature turned towards the Doctor, then back to Rose. It stopped pacing. The slick black muscle of its throat began to quiver. Almost lost to the wind there was a sound, a whisper, of human voices. Muffled, indistinguishable words, like the conversation of hushed students in a classroom.

With its throat still vibrating, the creature lowered its gruesome head. The whispering voices were louder now, more frantic. The creature charged.

xxx

The Doctor awoke to the sound of human voices. Low, murmuring, incomprehensible voices, but human nonetheless.

"Hello?" he wheezed.

Fire raged in his chest. He felt flat, trampled. A cold weight pinned him to the ground. He could still hear the voices but there was nothing else, no footsteps or rustles of movement to indicated there were people nearby.

The Doctor opened his eyes. The world was silver and black, lumpy and jagged, and very, very cold.

Where was he? Had he fallen? Surely, this wasn't the TARDIS, so he mustn't have made it back. And the weight on top of him, was it...?

His eyes widened as a long, webbed foot crushed the ground next to his head. Claws clicked on the ice beneath the snow. The whispering human voices were closer now, almost right above him.

_The creatures!_

The Doctor couldn't help but gasp as a sudden pressure drove him further into the ground. The pain in his chest was intense. He bit his lip hard to stop from screaming.

There was a snarl from the creature on top of him, and the pressure on his chest was lifted. Two webbed feet stomped down next to him. A bony tail snaked over his body, twitching sporadically, angrily.

The creature was facing away from him, though. It seemed to be snarling at some unseen foe. Ice and claw hit and again and again as the creature danced back and forth. With a strangely human wail, the creature raced away from him.

For a second, it was lost behind a screen of churned up snow. The flickering tail slapped against the Doctor's cheek, then went limp. A moment later, with black blood spraying from its belly, the creature crashed backwards.

There was silence. The creature, its skeletal head mere inches from the Doctor, flailed lamely in the snow. A second, then a third and forth set of webbed feet marched silently over it. By time they were gone, the creature on the ground was still.

xxx

Rose braced herself for the attack. Time seemed to crystallize. She covered her face with her arms, leant forward, waited.

Waited, waited.

"What _are_ you doing, you mad duck?"

"Huh?"

At glacier speed, Rose lowered her hands. The Doctor was standing over her, grinning. She had seen that expression often enough to recognise the lines of worry at the corners of his eyes.

"What- where- how-" she stammered, "Why didn't you help me?"

"You are a mad old thing." he said, shaking his head, "You're the expert here. What could I possibly help you with?"

Rose gaped at him. It took her several attempts before she finally managed to say, "That _thing_! That _creature_! It was about to rip my bleedin' throat out!"

The Doctor, watching Rose carefully, licked his lips. He was still smiling, but now it was nervous, like he expected at any moment to be shot dead.

After an awkward pause, he asked, "Um, when?"

"Right then!" Rose cried, "That big skeleton thing! With the gorilla arms and the-" she pointed to her head, "The skull. It was right here!"

She got to her feet. The Doctor flicked his gaze away from hers, to the snow covered ground. His frown deepened.

"There's no foot prints." he said, sounding grim, "Was it a very small creature?"

"No! It was at least as high as you. It was all black and bones. Look, it's got to be around here somewhere..." Rose glanced over her shoulder.

Above them, the slope was perfect and untouched. Nothing as substantial as a shadow marred the smooth surface. Aside from the curving toboggan tracks and their own foot prints, the only feature on the landscape below was the occasional copse of tall black rocks.

A mile or more down the slope, there was a lake, circular in shape. The lake water looked to be ash grey, or black. It was hard to tell which, because the surface was partially obscured by a noxious yellow fog. Beyond that, and all around, there was only mountains.

No monsters. Not even any birds, which usually flourished in some form or another in alpine areas. Not so much as a tree.

"I don't think so, Rose." the Doctor said, his voice soft, "Beta is a dead planet."

Rose gulped. Her anger was fading quickly, but the fear was still there. She looked up at the Doctor.

"Do you really think that I...imagined it?" she asked.

He flashed her a quick smile, and said, "We're at quite an altitude here, and the atmosphere is different to what you're used to. It can make your mind play tricks on you."

Rose tried to meet his eyes, but he turned away from her. She felt suddenly cold, and very alone. The image of those blood-stained sickle teeth closing in on her still loomed large in her mind. It sure as hell didn't feel like a hallucination.

"We've still got all day, ay?" she said, forcing her fear down, like she had so many times since meeting the Doctor, "We shouldn't waste it standing around and being mopey."

The Doctor relaxed visibly. When he met her eyes, his gaze was warm, and grateful.

"That's right. Besides," he grinned fiendishly at her, "I haven't gotten to do what I want to you, yet."

Rose couldn't help but laugh. Her tension evaporated, and she stuck her tongue out at him, "You haven't caught me, yet." she said.

"You better run, then."

With a squeal, Rose took off down the slope. The Doctor waited a moment before running after her. He shouldn't have bothered though, because while Rose moved through the snow like a fox, leaping and sliding but never loosing her balance, he couldn't stay on his feet for longer than a few steps.

In the end, he fluked catching her. Rose had taken to jogging just out of his reach, then ducking away whenever he tried to seize her.

"Come on, Doctor!" she called back to him, "How is it you've mastered time travel, but you can't walk three feet on snow?"

He moved to lunge, to take her by surprise. Instead, he slipped again, and crashed straight into her. Rose was knocked off her feet, and the pair fell in a jumble of limbs, rolling head over heels before finally coming to a stop at the foot of a boulder.

"Are you tryin' to kill me now?" Rose demanded after glancing up at the rock.

"Well, we survived, didn't we? Maybe if you hadn't been going so fast I wouldn't have ran into you. Maybe if you had wanted to go to the beach instead of this then I wouldn't fall over all the time. Do you know what the chances are of us getting hypothermia are now we're all covered in snow? Do you know..."

The Doctor had been looking at Rose during his lecture. Now, as his words trailed into silence, he seemed to be looking passed her.

"What? What is it?" Rose punched him playfully, "Is there a Dalek behind me, or somethin'?"

"It's uh," the Doctor tore his gaze away from whatever had grabbed his attention, and smiled faintly at Rose, "It's nothing."

She grinned back at him, "Good," she said, voice a little rougher than usual, "I wouldn't want anything to interrupt us."

The Doctor stared blankly at her, absently fiddling with the sonic screwdriver in his pocket. He was close enough that Rose could feel the warmth radiating off him. There was only inches between them, and she liked it.

"Rose." he said. The smell of her perfume was driving him crazy. She smelt so close. But when he looked at her, wrapped in her brightly coloured winter clothes, she seemed so far away...

The Doctor shook his head, and grinned at her. "You up for another toboggan ride?"

Rose sighed.

xxx

By time they were ready to leave, it was almost dark.

"We have got to do this again some time." Rose said, leaning against the Doctor.

He had an arm around her shoulders, holding her close to him while they started up the path towards the TARDIS.

"We should go skiing next time." he said, smiling at Rose, "And don't forget, there's a desert on the other side of this planet. We could always go sand tobogganing."

Rose giggled, "Not if you're as bad on sand as you are on snow. I can't believe you didn't break anything! I would have been all snapped bones by now, if I fell over as much as you."

The Doctor shook his head, but didn't say anything. For once, he seemed happy with the amiable silence between them.

Rose smiled to herself. She was already looking forward to their next adventure. She loved going places with the Doctor, despite the fact he had no sense of balance, and was prone to talking to himself.

She glanced up at him, and her smile faltered. He was talking to himself, but his mouth wasn't moving. Odd. And then, when she tried to understand what he was saying, she couldn't make anything out.

Of course, he could have just been speaking a different language. He did that, too, sometimes, when he didn't want her to know what he was thinking.

The Doctor turned to her. "Did you say something, Rose?"

Rose felt her blood run cold. Without slowing her stride, she glanced back. The path behind them was empty. Rose strained to hear the murmuring. It had stopped.

"What's wrong?" the Doctor asked.

She looked at him. And there, on the very peripheries of her vision, she saw it; a flash of red and tainted white, flickering for just a second six feet above the path. Then, half a second later, a glimpse of two disembodied black fingers, just above the ground.

Rose gulped. She struggled to make her voice work. Cold sweat trickled down her back.

"Rose, what is it?" the Doctor was frowning now. He'd never known Rose to talk to herself. Maybe the altitude really was too much-

"Run!" Rose shouted.

She pushed ahead of him, running dangerously fast on the narrow path.

"Rose!" he called, "Stop!"

"Run!" Rose shrieked. She was already a dozen yards ahead of him.

What in the universe did she think there was to run from? Puzzled, the Doctor glanced back at the path.

It was empty.

"What the-"

And suddenly, the path wasn't empty. An animal, a creature, seemingly all shining black muscle and exposed bone, burst out of the thin air behind him. Literally melted out of nowhere.

He raised his hands up to defend himself, but the creature simply shoved him out its way. Its watery yellow eyes were fixed on Rose. Running on its thick hind legs, the creature moved fast, certainly much faster than any human.

"Rose!" the Doctor shouted, "Run faster!"

He was about to chase after the creature, to try to stop it somehow, when a second monster appeared behind him. This one wasn't interested in Rose.

This one was headed right for the Doctor.

xxx xxx xxx

_I went to the snow yesterday (hurray Southern Hemisphere!), to get the feel for things. I discovered that snow is both cold and wet.  
Thanks to Matt for taking me tobogganing (which I suck at).  
I'll update soon if you like it. Thank you again for the reviews!_


	4. Darkness Falls

_A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you once again for the reviews! Please take this new chapter as an offering of thanks. If things are a bit confusing here, just hold on, because it should become clear soon. Nothing happens without a reason, right?_

_xxx xxx_

The Doctor froze.

He could hear Rose up ahead, screaming. From less than a yard away, the creature snarled at him. Its huge mouth hung open, thick black tongue darting across the long rows of teeth.

Even hunched over, swaying like a pray mantis readying for the assault, the creature towered over him. It was close to eight foot high, and maybe ten foot in length, from foremost points of its protruding teeth, to the twitching end of its naked bone tail.

"You're an ugly damn thing, aren't you?" the Doctor said, under his breath.

The creature dropped to all fours, and roared. The cry started as an almost human scream, then the pitch lifted and became a shriek of grinding metal.

The Doctor stumbled back, hands clamped over his ears. The sound was agonizing, almost physical in its force, like sheets of steel scraping against each other.

"Doctor!"

Rose. She was alive, at least. The Doctor ground his teeth together and forced himself to open his eyes. Without his eyes and hands, he was useless to help anybody, Rose or himself.

"Hold on, Rose!" he shouted.

He scrambled back up the path, with the creature's scream still ringing in his ears. The track twisted sharply to the left, and suddenly the Doctor spotted Rose up ahead. She was sprinting, running for all she was worth, glancing over her shoulder every few yards.

There was nothing behind her.

In the sixty feet that separated Rose and the Doctor, there was nothing but empty snow. The fresh imprints of Rose's boots sunk deeply into the snow, occasionally breaking up the tracks they'd left earlier. Aside from that, there was nothing. No monster foot prints. Nothing.

"Rose, stop! They're not real!" the Doctor shouted.

He had stopped running again, and stood beside the jagged buttress of rock that forced the twist in the path. It wasn't until much, much later that he would realise his mistake.

Rose appeared not to hear him. She rounded the next bend in the path, and disappeared from view. The Doctor sighed.

There was something strange going on on Beta. He wasn't sure what it was, but definitely there were no mons-

A sudden freight train force at his back sent him stumbling. He regained his balance, dangerously close to the edge of the path. Below, black teeth of rock stuck out from the cliff face, eager to snare him if he fell.

His eyes closed against the vertigo, the Doctor reached out, searching for something, anything, to take hold of. His fingers sunk into something warm and soft, and he grabbed hold of it.

A second later, he was shoved roughly forward. He tripped, one knee hitting the fluted rock at the very exterior of the path. Feeling himself starting to slide, he clutched the object in his hand harder, hoping it would support him.

There was a bellow from behind him, and he was shoved again. This time however, the creature he had hold of, because as much as he wanted to deny it he knew that's what it was, went forwards with him.

They fell. The Doctor made one last desperate attempt to catch hold of something, but his hand only groped air. The creature, its free-falling bulk only inches above him, shrieked.

Together, they slammed into one of the jutting spires of rock. The rock jerked loose from the cliff face, and promptly snapped off and sent them tumbling again. Almost spitefully, the creature sunk its needle teeth into the Doctor's shoulder.

The fractured earth rushed towards them. The Doctor was too winded to scream.

A second later, man and beast hit the ground. The Doctor felt his ribs snap, crushed beneath his own weight. Long teeth of rock cut into his belly. He didn't feel the pain, just the darkness washing gently over him. One thought filled his head.

_What about Rose?_

xxx

"Oh, bloody hell!" Rose cried, dodging the creature's snapping jaws once again.

She was exhausted. Running through snow was hard work. Rose knew that if she slipped, she'd be done for.

These creatures were nothing like the Doctor, after all. They moved through the snow with practiced, if somewhat ungainly, ease. They also moved in total silence. It was only with her frequent glances back that Rose was able to predict when the one chasing her would lunge.

She ducked away again. There was still half a mile between her and the TARDIS, and Rose knew she wouldn't last that long. She would either slip, and be eaten by the creatures, or collapse from exhaustion. It was really just a matter of which came first.

Far behind her, she heard the Doctor. _They're not real_. Rose checked over her shoulder. The creature was still there, alternating between running on its hind legs and dipping down to all fours.

"Forget that!" she said. Hallucination or not, she wasn't about to stop and shake hands.

Rose took the next corner sharply. The creature was less than two feet behind her. Its cool, foul breath blew across her neck. She glanced behind her, saw it about to lunge-

-and salvation emerged. A network of small caves poke-marked the cliff face immediately ahead of her. The entrances were no more than a foot in diametre, and the lowest was six feet above the path.

Rose didn't care. She jumped up, grabbed a-hold of the lip of the nearest cave, and scrambled up the fragmented rock wall.

Below, the creature clamped its jaws shut on empty air. It skidded to a halt, head cocked to watch Rose, tail swaying steadily.

She gave it the finger, and pulled herself up into the cave. Inside, it was smooth, almost perfectly round, and less than eight foot deep. Rose made her way to the end, and pressed her back against the wall. Looking down the line of her body, she could see the cave entrance, almost entirely filled by the creature's head.

"Get out!" she shrieked, kicking at it.

She caught it hard on mouth. It snorted at her, and withdrew its head. A minute later, it appeared again. Rose sighed, and wormed herself into a more comfortable position.

She was sure it was only a matter of time before the Doctor rescued her.

xxx

This is about where we came in.

Rose's breath came in wheezing gasps, her head felt bloated, and oddly light. She felt weak, and couldn't go more than a few steps without breaking into a fit of rib-wracking coughs.

She didn't have the energy to look up, instead keeping her eyes on her feet, watching as they swung through the air and then crashed back to earth.

"Nearly there." she rasped.

Instantly, her words were lost to the wind. The wind. The wind screamed like a banshee in its kamikaze assault against the cliff face. It drove the snow down in battalions from the sky, tossed it up in swarms from the ground.

Rose's face stung from the biting ice. Her eyes seemed swollen. The snow no longer melted when it settled on her soaking clothes. It froze solid.

But the TARDIS. Wasn't it...surely it had to be close now. Rose tried to lift her head to check. Abruptly, an itch burned in her throat.

"Christ!" Rose gasped, dropping to the ground.

It felt as though all the air had been sucked from her lungs. She gaped, hands to her throat, cold forgotten. Her brain tingled and she coughed, choked, mouth slick with bile.

Flailing like a caught fish on the ground, Rose realised she couldn't breath. She was going to suffocate. Bright points of light burned into her vision.

And then, with the yawning gasp of a drowning man reaching the surface, Rose found she could breath again. She sucked the fiery kiss of oxygen like she could drink it. Deep breaths, she told herself, don't overdo it. The spots of light faded slowly.

"Christ." She sighed, flopping onto her back.

Not so high above her, tangled on the ragged mountain peaks, brown clouds broiled. Snow cascaded down, dancing in violent whirlpools of air current.

For long minutes, Rose watched the clouds, and the snow. She barely noticed the cold, or the that frost cloaked her in white. After a while, her spirits began to rise, and her stamina bubbled back.

She couldn't be far from the TARDIS, after all. She must have walked close to half a mile from the cave.

Rose sat up, keeping her head low. Visibility at ground level was poor. Banks of snow piled at the sides of the path, and the sleet made everything look static-y. On her hands and knees, Rose continued along the track. She mistrusted the air above her, enough to put up with limited visibility.

And, to her immense relief, she found could breath easily once more. Even the coughing fits had disappeared.

Rose had only crawled a few yards when she hit something.

"TARDIS!" she squealed, running her hands up the object.

With her hands at eye level, Rose frowned. She looked up. Three hundred feet above her head, lightning flashed against the mountain's daggered peak. She hadn't run into the TARDIS, after all.

Rose sat back, and looked around.

She was close to the alcove, all right. She was sitting in it.

The TARDIS was gone.

xxx

With one last solid shove, the Doctor pushed the carcass off his back.

The creature slid limply onto the ground. Death hadn't made it any prettier. The Doctor had ripped a considerable patch of its fleshy skin off, and now the creature appeared to be shrink wrapped, laminated.

"No hard feelings," he said cheerfully to the carcass, "You weren't to know my reputation."

He climbed to his feet, and brushed the dirt off his jacket. And nearly screamed.

"Oh, right." He hissed through clenched teeth, and glared at the dead creature, "One point to you, anyway."

Gently, he prodded his ribcage. It felt soft, and less resilient than usual. His suit front was torn in several places, and stained with blood. There was a shard of flint sticking out of the skin just above his naval.

He plucked it out, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Something to show Rose later.

The Doctor glanced around the ravine. Sheer black walls of rock loomed to his left and right. Behind him, the mountain eased down in its gentle slope, eventually reaching the level of the ravine. Before him, the chasm continued weaving through the mountains, not once flanked by anything less than vertical cliffs.

"I'll just have to go around, then." The Doctor said to himself.

With a shrug, he turned around, and headed back towards the mountain slope. He was hardly hampered by the pain in his ribs, and not worried in the least.

After all, he'd found a banana in his jacket pocket.

Things were looking up.

xxx xxx xxx

_Well, here we are again. Hours to write, minutes to read. Hope it was to standard!  
Anyway, I've been racking my brains for the last week for a name for the creatures. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Please! Oh yes, and Rose is suffocating on a rising layer of carbon monoxide. How? Well, if I told you, it wouldn't be a teaser. Not that it was a particularly good one, at any rate._


	5. Blizzard

_A/N: I'm really sorry about how long this took to post, and if there's any mistakes in this chapter. Really, I'm sorry. I didn't want to go out tonight but I have to. Got to run!  
Uhm, yes. Madame de Pompadour._

xxx xxx

The snow fell harder.

Rose's face was numb from the stinging cold, her hands felt like blocks of ice. There was an icy crust on her knees, and it slipped her up as she crawled through the snow.

Meet Rose Tyler, time travelling popsicle.

"Doctor," she muttered.

The snowy path passed as a blur beneath her. Hand over hand, retracing her steps.

"Why would you leave me?"

How far had she come? She'd been crawling for fifteen minutes, maybe. An hour, maybe. Days, maybe. The path never seemed to change, but the blizzard picked up, forcing her against the cliff face, burying her alive in the snow.

As much as she tried, Rose couldn't stop thinking about the Doctor. Or more specifically, his history with women.

Sarah-Jane Smith. Dropped of in England and never spoken of again. Left to dream about him for what, twenty, thirty years? She would have quite gladly been left forever.

Madame de Pompadour. The Doctor had been all smiles and heroic actions for her. For a while, it even seemed as the mistress would accompany them on the TARDIS. But no.

In the Doctor's own words, Madame de Pompadour had been one of the most significant women in the history of earth. And, as far as Rose could determine, he'd ditched her.

"What chance did I have?" Rose whispered bitterly.

Head down, shoulders set like a bull in the charge, Rose crawled on. She might have been left, like all the others. But unlike the others, she wasn't going to take it lying down.

xxx

"Transparent exodermis, creature apparently terminated when this is damaged."

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder, to a spot a hundred yards away. Of the two creatures that had died at the bottom of the ravine, only the one that had fallen was visible. The other had been half buried under the falling snow.

"Possible causes of death; exposure, suffocation."

He tried to think back to the creature's skin in his hand, to remember what it felt like. Warm, soft, a little damp. Like sticking your fingers into a pudding.

"Possible sign of amphibia." He said, trying to keep his voice level.

He knew that he was missing something, something obvious, something vital. But the pain in his ribs was intense, almost nauseating. He could hardly think for the effort it took just to walk.

It wouldn't do to let his guard down, not even to himself. He was all too aware that there were more creatures, at least three more, somewhere ahead of him in the ravine. The question was _where_.

How fast they would move, if they would stop to rest, if he would be able to see them, he didn't know.

"Three rows of serrated-"

The Doctor paused mid-sentence. There was something moving in the shadows of the base of the ravine wall, about twenty feet in front of him.

As silently as he could in his squelching sneakers, the Doctor moved closer to the gnarled bracken that hugged the cliff. It offered little cover, being nothing more than the brittle skeleton of a large briar bush, but he pressed closer to it anyway.

Minutes went by, and nothing stirred. The wail of wind through the gully, the soft hiss of snow, and the slow grind of water moving under the river's glacial crust, provided all there was to see and hear.

"Come on, I know you're there." The Doctor whispered, his gaze steady.

A sudden flicker of silver in the shadows made him take a step back. He groped though the bracken, searching for a viable weapon. His hand found a branch, probably too short and too fragile to be of much use, but it was better than nothing.

Armed with the branch, the Doctor moved out of the bracken, and towards the shadows.

As he drew closer, he began to make out details on the cliff face. The black rock was seeded with holes, hundreds and hundred of them, each one the size and shape of a large dinner plate. Caves.

There was something crawling across them.

Slowly, with the branch tucked under one arm, the Doctor reached out to touch the cliff face. The rock was moving enough to appear liquid. There was an awful lot of… something… up there.

"That's odd." The Doctor frowned, his hand held up to what little light the bald, half-exposed moon provided.

His hand was covered in fine, silver powder. The Doctor looked up again. His frown deepened.

"Moths?"

The cliff face exploded.

xxx

Rose stalked along the path on all fours, grunting and growling like a lioness.

"Bloody Doctor thinking he can bleedin' leave me." she muttered, "We'll just see about that!"

The cold no longer bothered her. She hardly noticed the wind's increasing pitch, nor the pummeling snow. She felt hot, boiling even, warmed by the heat of her anger.

"We'll see who leaves who in the cold to die."

Perhaps if she had been just a little more focused on the situation at hand, Rose could have avoided the next of her indignities. Oh, well.

Her hand struck down on something hard. Rose powered on, ignoring it. Her knee hit the same something, covered with a light veneer of fresh snow. Again, she ignored it, pushing her other knee against a considerably lower patch of ground.

The spot of higher ground began to slide. Rose shrieked.

"Blimey!" she shouted, feeling herself being pulled along with the higher ground, slipping down the descending path.

With her right foot, the one still on stagnant earth, Rose kicked out. Her foot hooked around something solid, and she was dragged off the moving ground, and sent sprawling face-first into the snow.

"Ugh," said Rose, through a mouthful of snow and dirt.

She looked up, confused as to what had happened. Some sort of personal landslide, maybe?

Then again, maybe not. Rose's heart leapt to see the toboggan, coloured white under the dusting of snow, slide to a halt only yards in front of her. The Doctor must have left it on the path when the creatures attacked.

"Oh, toboggan," Rose clambered towards it, hot tears welling at the corners of her eyes, "He abandoned you, too."

She kissed the freezing metal frame.

Far away, muffled by the falling snow, someone screamed.

xxx

"Moths." Huffed the Doctor.

The ravine was coming to an end. The rock walls on either side were now only shoulder high, and they soon flattened out into a wide, shallow basin. In the middle of the basin, a few hundred feet away, sat the lake.

Ordinarily, the Doctor would have been fascinated by the lake's muddy shores, and by the halo of yellow cloud that floated a hundred feet above it. That night, he hardly even saw it.

"Moths." He repeated.

The moths. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of them had poured from the cliff face caves, as silent and silver as fog. They were huge, too, the size of footballs. Fluffy white flying footballs.

Blindly, they had ploughed into him, knocking him off his feet. The branch had been useless, and soon discarded. So the Doctor had kicked and fought his way out of the centre of the swarm, only to find that the moths weren't the slightest bit interested in him.

They had risen up in a cloud of fur and wings, swept up by the wind and bashed against the cliff face, but always rising. Although the Doctor had craned his head up to watch them, they were well camouflaged against the snowy sky, and he soon lost sight of them.

"Bloody moths." He scowled.

There were big, round holes in his jacket and pants legs where a few peckish moths had stopped to snack. His clothes and hair were coated with the silver dust from their wings. His ribs ached. He wanted to go back to the TARDIS. Even Time Lords have their bad days.

"_Lepidoptera notodontidea cerura vinula_," he said, regarding his jacket dismally, "The giant puss moth."

He continued trudging through the snow. When the rock wall was only waist height, he climbed carefully onto it, then stopped to rest. Once he got back to the TARDIS, it would be alright. Then he could rest properly, and heal. No more broken ribs, no more moth eaten clothes. No more squashed bananas.

The Doctor sighed, and said to himself, "I must be getting old."

After a few minutes, the throbbing in his ribs subsided. He found himself thinking about Rose, though he wasn't sure why. He suspected it was because he really, really, _really_ needed a cup of tea. And though he'd never admit it to her, her cups of tea were capital.

Hot stuff.

The Doctor grinned to himself. Even the thought of hot tea restored him a little. Still grinning, he climbed to his feet.

And then promptly fell back down.

Baffled, the Doctor rose up on his hands and knees, and stared down the mountain slope. Fifty feet away and fast retreating, there was a low black object rocketing through the snow.

Above the soft crush of falling powder, there was a faint, distance cry. Almost a whoop.

The Doctor struggled to his feet. He stared after the fast disappearing object for a moment longer, then shrugged. Who knew?

He turned away from it, and started up the mountain slope. There were already two too many life forms on Beta, not including himself and Rose. The last thing anyone needed was for those life forms to learn tobogganing.

What would be next? Time travel?

The Doctor scoffed at his own joke. Whatever its illegitimate life forms, Beta was still in the Dark Ages. So imagine that. Tobogganing, time travelling primitives. He snorted. Why, that would be like humans-

"Rose!"

With hurricane force, the Doctor whipped around to face down the slope. The speeding object was barely visible in the distance.

That would be like humans alright, thought the Doctor as he broke into a run. And one human in particular.

"Rose!"

xxx

From the muddy border where the snow met the lake, Rose heard her name being called.

"Huh?"

She was still reeling from the thrilling trip down the mountain path, and then down the slope. She had kept close to the edge, finding it faster and easier to navigate than the inner part of the track. And much more dangerous, of course, but Rose was used to danger.

"Rose!"

Her name again. Rose turned to look up the slope. There was something, barely visible against the broad grey body of the mountain. It looked to be some kind of small avalanche.

Seeing the avalanche was headed for her, Rose hopped off the toboggan, and dragged it aside. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of rotten cabbage permeating from the lake.

As the mass of snow and dirt approached, she thought she could make out an arm, maybe a leg.

She frowned. "Doctor?"

If it was him, tumbling down the slope, more snowball than man, he had no chance of hearing her. Rose took a few more steps back, just in case.

"Rose!" the avalanche screamed.

The ground trembled in its wake. Rose watched, eyebrows raised, as it roared passed her. A second later, with an audible SLOSH, the avalanche hit the water line, and exploded.

Rose stared at it, stunned. Tense seconds passed. The crumbled mass of snow began to melt in the lake water.

"Is that you, Doctor?" Rose said aloud, when an arm, black with waterlog and laced with bite-sized holes, jerked up out of the mud.

"Argh." Said the figure attached to the arm.

Without another word, Rose trotted over to him. The Doctor (who else?) was on his back, half buried in snow, and slowly sinking into the lake mud.

"Rose, Rose, listen." He mumbled to her, as she struggled to help him up, "I have to tell you something."

Rose's heart skipped a beat. "Wh-what?" she stammered.

"Rose, I-" he stared up at her, "-I really, really, sincerely, with all my heart, totally and completely, absolutely,"

He stopped speaking, and just gazed up at her, as though she could read his mind. Rose finished pulling him out of the mud, and sat him on the relatively solid ground beside the toboggan. Smiling, she brushed the soaking strands of his hair back, out of his eyes.

"What?" she said, as kindly and patiently as she could without screaming first.

The Doctor smiled faintly back, and said; "I want a cup of tea."

Rose stared at him.

At last, when she had completely suppressed the urge to strangle him, she spoke.

"I thought you left me," she said, "I thought you abandoned me. It's been hours since those monsters attacked us. What- where have you been? The TARDIS is gone."

The Doctor stared up at the sky. The clouds were brown, and they broiled, frothing and bubbling and throwing out long tendrils of lightning. They hung low over the mountains, slicing their bulging bellies open on the craggy peaks.

The Doctor turned his attention away from the clouds, and onto the lake. The snow drift he'd brought down with him was all but gone. The fogginess in his mind dissipated.

"Rose," he said, inclining his head towards her, "Did you see anything strange up there, on the mountain path? When you were coming back down?"

Rose jerked away from the Doctor as though he'd just announced he had the plague.

"I don't believe this!" she cried, scrambling to her feet, "The bleedin' TARDIS is missing, there's flipping monsters everywhere, we're stranded on this," she spat the next words with a vehemence that surprised the Doctor, "_planet_, and all you can think about is sight seeing!"

"It doesn't help to dwell on things, Rose." He said to her, "Did you see anything strange, or not?"

She stared at him a moment longer. He looked up at her, face placid, from the mud. Rose let out a strangled sigh, and muttered something incomprehensible.

"The lake looked to be on fire." She said, not looking at him, "Obviously it isn't." she added hastily, "But it looked like it was. Lots of orange flames."

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor grinned at her, "You just saved our lives."

"What do you mean?" Rose frowned, but the Doctor was already on his feet and dragging her towards the lake.

Thunder rumbled overhead. Snow whipped around their faces, almost blinding them. The mud sucked around their ankles, and soon water sloshed to their knees. Rose was surprised at how warm it was.

"Have you gone completely bonkers? What in God's name are you doing?" she shouted, trying to pull away from him.

She'd survived monsters, caves, crippling hunger, freezing cold and nearly asphyxiating. And now the Doctor was trying to drown her.

"Rose, look." He replied.

Rose looked to where he was pointing. She stopped struggling.

xxx xxx

_Sorry again. Please review if you don't think it sucks. Next chapter should be up soon._

_It's called the Lake of Fire._


	6. The Lake of Fire

_**A/N:** Is it just me, or do cursors look fine the way they are? It must just be me. Thanks again to everyone who reviewed. After being crushed underneath a landslide, the Doctor and Rose have a heart to heart. Kind of. Cookies for everyone who reviews!_

xxx xxx

It was hell.

The grey slope of the mountain quivered, rippled like the surface of a pond. Snow sloshed up in great waves, and pulled away from the slope, leaving the black rock bare and exposed.

Rose could see immediately what had happened. Sheet lightning danced across the boiling clouds, and one stray bolt had crashed into the mountain's high ridge. The booming blast that followed had badly shaken the rock, triggering a landslide.

And that, roaring as it stripped the mountain side, was headed for them now.

"Move it or lose it, Rose!" the Doctor bellowed.

With his hand still gripping her arm, he ran. Water surged to their waists, mud sucked at their feet. Unseen monsters snaked around their legs.

The landslide gained speed and size with devastating ferocity, devouring the mountain face in its wide, frothy mouth. The Doctor and Rose had only a handful of seconds before it slammed down on the lake, and consumed them.

They ran. The Doctor tried to calculate how far they would need to move to be out of harm's way. Fifty yards? Sixty? The numbers he came up with were impossible. They'd never make it.

"Run, dammit!" Rose screamed at him.

He glanced at her. Thunder detonated overhead. Icy air, blown out before the landslide, slashed at them. Running through the water was impossible. The Doctor was falling behind fast.

Rose hissed through her teeth, and half-turned towards him. She grabbed his jacket, and forced him to keep up with her.

Behind them, the landslide hit the water.

The white buttresses that formed its twenty foot high front cleaved the water from the lake bed, pushing it into a tidal wave. Weakened by the warm water, and severely slowed by its opposing force, the buttresses toppled over, sending out a second wave.

Thirty yards away, the first wave swept Rose and the Doctor of their feet.

Rose, clutching the Doctor's jacket tightly, rolled under water before struggling to the surface. Half a second later, he rose up beside her.

"Don't. Drink. The. Water." He gasped. Mud poured off him in dark rivulets.

Rose had an extremely brief, extremely superfluous moment where she wondered, in horror, if she looked as bad as he did.

She didn't have time to ask. The second wave hit, knocking them both off their feet again. Rose's head went under, and she gagged on the putrid water. It was foul, like-

"_Come on_!"

Rose's scalp burned with sudden agony, and she felt herself being dragged up, out of the water. The Doctor let go of her hair, and regarded her somberly.

"Rose," he said.

From the corner of her watering eye, Rose saw something that made her blood run cold. The crushing bulk of the landslide, the snow and rocks that had driven the front, were blasting into the lake.

A boulder slapped into the water, only yards away. The landslide didn't seem hindered in the least by the warm water. It thundered into the lake at eighty miles an hour, flicking ten ton rocks into the air like they were nothing more than pebbles.

It was going to hit them. Rose felt strangely numb, like she was watching it all from afar.

The Doctor's voice jerked her back to reality. "Don't let go. And don't drink the water."

Rose swallowed hard. So this was it, she thought. Almost gingerly, she reached out, and took the Doctor's hand.

"I lo-"

And then the landslide hit. Roe was driven down, under the water. The Doctor's hand was torn from her grip almost instantly.

Her vision flashed green, then blue. She was being torn apart. The water ripped at her, and Rose had the impression of something huge above her head. A roar like splitting continents filled her mind.

A tremendous force dragged her backwards, so her head tipped up into the fierce current. Water filled her mouth, poured up her nose. Rose's vision flashed pink. Then, alongside the strange sensation of flying, the world turned white.

xxx

"You are an inane old thing."

Everything hurt. Arms, legs, chest. Her head in particular throbbed with a dull ache.

Rose groaned.

"Are we on the TARDIS yet?" she whispered. Her throat burned to much to speak any louder.

"Open your eyes and see." The Doctor replied, sounding excited.

Tentatively, Rose opened her eyes. Above her, there was brown. Below her, there black. Pale snow flakes drifted lazily through the sky.

"We're still here." Rose said hoarsely. She glared at the Doctor, who was looming over her, his expression cheerful. "Why did you sound so excited?"

The Doctor grinned, "Oh, I thought it might cheer you up a little."

Rose groaned again.

"Look on the bright side, ducky. We survived. You don't appear to have anything broken beyond repair. Capital effort, ey?"

The sky, though still heavy with clouds, was peaceful. For the first time in what felt like years, there was no storms, no landslides, no monsters. The only sound, aside from the soft exhalation of breath, was a gentle lapping like water splashing again a pier.

Far above them, the halo of yellow fog was still visible. Intermittently, small orange flames raced around its circumference.

"Pretty, isn't it?" the Doctor said, turning to look up at the halo, "It's hydrogen sulphide. Through the day, it covers the surface of the lake. At night, it's hot enough to rise up a hundred feet. It's been burning ever since the storm."

Something about their situation struck Rose as odd. She sat up, and glanced around.

"Where are we?" she queried.

"We're on the lake." The Doctor grinned at her, "In a nest."

A nest? Rose checked the ground beneath her. It was hard, and appeared to be constructed entirely of reeds.

The nest, if that's what it was, was close to six foot in diametre, easily big enough for her to lay down. A short lip ran around the edge. Rose peered over it. Water lapped against the base of the nest, three foot down.

"What's it a nest for?" Rose frowned. She didn't recall seeing any birds since being on Beta.

"Frogs, I'd say. Big frogs. Notice how the bottom curves down in the middle? Like a giant bowl. It's probably full of water when the frog lays her eggs." The Doctor said happily.

Rose didn't quite share his enthusiasm. As much as she liked frogs, she didn't particularly want to crawl around in their slimy nests.

Noticing her disdain, the Doctor said, "It's really quite comfortable. And safe. You wouldn't believe the time I had trying to get you up here. I had to drag you up by the hair."

Well, that explained the pain in her scalp. Rose wondered how long she'd been unconscious. Long enough for the storm to pass, at least.

The Doctor hadn't stopped talking. "This really is an amazing planet. Technically, there shouldn't be any life here at all. But here it is, flourishing. Beautiful big monsters, swarms of giants moths." He sighed contentedly, "It's just lovely."

"Lovely?" Rose fumed.

She was about to get stuck into him, when he added, as an after note to his speech, "Watch out for leeches, mind. And mites. Helminthes. Frogs carry a lot of parasites. You wouldn't want to pick any up."

Rose decided to change the subject. She didn't want to hear anything else about frogs. Her view of them as cute, charming little creatures was already severely damaged. Leeches, ew.

"Doctor. Doctor. Stop talking for a minute, will you?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry." The Doctor turned to her, face flushed. He had to decency to look embarrassed.

Rose gave him a strange look, halfway between a smile and a frown. Maybe like she thought he was funny.

"Before, just before we got hit by that landslide, you started to say something to me. What were you going to say?" she asked. It bothered her slightly that she could only speak in whispers. She didn't want the Doctor worming his way out of anything by saying he couldn't hear her.

"I." He said.

And that was it.

For nearly a full minute, the Doctor stared at her. His ears and cheeks burned beet red. His shoulders were set, stiff. A slight grimace pulled at the corner of his mouth.

"I." He said again, then gulped. The action looked almost painful, and when he spoke again, his voice was high.

"I lo- lo- loathe, uh, I loathe landslides." He blurted, "Th-they're just awful. Really bad."

"You loathe landslides." Rose said, narrowing her eyes.

"Y- yes. Don't you? Yes, I should think you do. Well, that's that sorted. Where were we? Talking about frogs, wasn't it? Frogs." The Doctor grinned manically, his eyes wide, "Salientia, also called Anura. One of the most advanced orders of amphibians in the universe. They don't have ears, you know. Not like reptiles. Frogs have a dorso-lateral fold, which senses vibrations under water. They can actually determine the distance and size of the source of the vibrations. Really amazing."

"You are unbelievable. You're the one whose flippin' amazing!" Rose cried, forgetting her sore throat, "Forget frogs! Forget landslides!"

She turned on the Doctor, who shrunk away from the heat of her anger. His eyes were still wide, but now there was a sort of terror on his face.

"If you are not going to take me seriously," Rose hissed at him, "Which you are _not_, then you can at least do something useful and get us off this planet. It is not beautiful. It is not fascinating. It's horrible! Now, shut up about frogs and get us out of here!"

As soon as she said it, she felt bad. But it had been a long, long day, and she wasn't about to apologise.

"Okay," the Doctor sniffed, not looking at her, "I'll get us out of here."

"Right. Good." And then, because she really did feel guilty, Rose added, "Can I help?"

"You should rest. It's been a long day. I'll keep an eye on things." The Doctor still refused to look at her.

He wasn't sure what he felt; hurt that Rose had yelled at him, or relieved she stopped him rambling. Either way, he didn't want her to see his expression.

Rose shrugged. "Alright then. Good night."

She was cold and wet, and the nest floor was hard. The Doctor stretched his legs before him, crossed at the ankle, and leant back on his elbows. Both of them watched the halo of fog.

An hour might have passed in this way, before Rose fell asleep. Snow flakes gradually built up on her shoulder and hip. The Doctor brushed it off gently. It felt good to be lazy, to pretend to be a little normal, after such a trying day.

The Doctor smiled to himself. Although he didn't think anything would ever happen between them, it was still nice to pretend sometimes.

With a sigh, he laid down next to her.

Tomorrow, they would find the TARDIS. Then they would sleep all afternoon, and go to earth for the evening to eat. Everything would be back to normal, tomorrow…

The Doctor blinked.

Seconds ago, the sky had been dark, and rolling with clouds. Now it was pale pink, and perfectly clear, aside a few wispy cirrus clouds in the east. The moon was white, and hung despondently jut above the horizon.

With his eyes wide open for fear of what would happen if he blinked again, the Doctor sat up. In the direction of the cirrus clouds, the mountain tops glowed gold.

"Oh no." the Doctor groaned. He couldn't believe it. He'd fallen asleep.

"What is it?" Rose mumbled, rolling over.

The fog halo was lower now, much lower. Fifty feet, at the highest. All across the surface of the lake, ripples were forming. Things were stirring. The sun wasn't even in the sky, and Beta was waking up.

"I uh, think it's about time we left, Rose." The Doctor said slowly.

"What? Why?" Rose groaned, "I just woke up."

"You know the saying about Rome?" the Doctor asked, watching the ripples. Shadows moved under the surface of the lake.

Noticing the tension in his voice, Rose sat up. Her hair was matted, and in some places stuck up in tangled clumps. Her eyes were red, irritated by the lake water, and the constant wind. Mud streaked her face and clothes.

"When in Rome, do what the Romans do?" she guessed.

The Doctor shot her a glance, then jerked back. A look like fear passed over his face.

"What?" Rose frowned, touching a hand to her hair, "Is there something in my hair?"

The Doctor shook his head wordlessly. He tore his gaze away from her, and stared at the nest floor. _Don't laugh_, he told himself. _You're injured, you can't defend yourself if she tries to kill you. Don't laugh._

"Are you laughing?" Rose demanded, raising her fist.

"No!"

"You are!" she accused.

"Rose, come on. Let's not do this now. We have a bigger problem. Let's focus on that." The Doctor said, hands raised to defend himself.

"What is it?" Rose asked, in a tone of voice that suggested the problem would want to be pretty damn urgent if he didn't want to be pulverized.

"Do as the Romans do, right? Well, right now, the Romans are all getting the hell out of Rome."

Rose frowned harder. "What're you talking about?"

Exasperatedly, the Doctor gestured at the lake. The ripples were all moving away from the centre of the swamp. On the shore, surges of white water poured up into the air, before tumbling back down again.

"Whatever lives in this swamp is leaving. Something is going to happen when the sun rises. We ought to get out of here." He said.

Rose sighed. The sun would be over the horizon in two, maybe three minutes. The lake shore seemed to be a long way away. It was unfair. She hadn't even had breakfast yet.

With a weary smile, she said, 'We better get moving, then."

Below them, the ripples were all headed for the shore.

xxx xxx

_I am so sorry if this chapter is lame. The next one should make up for it. In the next chapter, the plot really gets kicking. I don't know if they'll survive it yet!  
In case you're curious as to the time setting, it's after the Age of Steel. I haven't seen it yet (it's on this weekend), so if the story doesn't exactly fit in there (maybe Rose grows a second head in it or something. Certainly I didn't account for that), then you know why. It's shortly after Mickey leaves the TARDIS, anyway. Ugh. Blather blather blather._

_Sax-Hog._


	7. Over the Edge

_**A/N:** The other name for this chapter is 'Divine Intervention'. I've been typing it all week, so it's a bit all over the place. Never in my life have I been so needed to aid with school projects, French lessons, and family birthday parties. And I swear, if I have to answer the phone one more time today, I'm going to start sending people anthrax in the mail. Hope y'all enjoy it, anyway._

xxx xxx

Rose was swimming as soon as she hit the water.

The warmth of the lake shocked her more than icy cold would have. The Doctor splashed down next to her, and Rose kicked hard against the solid side of the nest. Spluttering, with the brackish water surging to over her, she threw arm over arm in an awkward free style. She felt heavy and uncomfortable in water, even though she'd discarded her snow jacket before diving in. Swimming lessons did nothing if you didn't visit the pool every so often, and Rose hadn't been in years.

"Keep you chin up."

Beside her, the Doctor moved easily through the water. His face and hair shone gold in the early morning light.

"Easy for you to say!" Rose panted.

Water poured into her mouth. Rose coughed, and spat it out quickly. It had a foul, acrid taste, like rotten eggs. She clamped her mouth shut, and continued towards the shore.

The Doctor rolled like a seal in the water. The warmth soothed the pain in his ribs and shoulder. Lying on his back, with one eye on Rose as she floundered beside him, he could see that the halo of fog was descending rapidly.

If he was right about Beta, then hydrogen sulphide wouldn't be the only poisonous fog pouring down the slopes towards the lake. Hydrogen chloride and sulpher dioxide would burn their eyes and throat, and any hydrogen fluoride could prove fatal.

But as deadly as they all were, the Doctor wasn't particularly worried about them. Nor was he bothered by the slick, unseen bodies that passed through the water beneath him. The glimpses of black flesh and bleached bone that slithered just under the surface did nothing to perturb him.

"How long can you hold your breath, Rose?" he wondered aloud.

Rose gagged on another mouthful of black water before replying. "Two or three minutes? W-we don't have to go underwater, do we?"

"I hope not. We'll be dead if we do." The Doctor said, grinning.

He rolled back onto his belly, slowing his pace to stay beside Rose. The lake's edge was twenty yards away. Five yards from the shore, white water poured into the empty air. Droplets sprayed up as unseen feet trampled the surface. Light shadows freckled the muddy shore before the snow line.

The golden globe of the sun crested the mountain tops. The fog halo hovered thirty feet about the lake surface.

"Not long now, Rose," the Doctor said, seeing his companion beginning to slow, "Don't stop."

Thirty feet wasn't much. Like a pilot fish, the halo of hydrogen sulphide was a good indicator of the other gases around. But hydrogen sulphide was a light gas, only slightly heavier than warm air. The heavy gases, the invisible killers, would reach them far before the halo touched the lake.

The invisible killers. Carbon monoxide and dioxide. Odourless, colourless, lethal. The initial symptoms were dizziness and a feeling of weakness, and very soon after, suffocation. In the warmth of the rising sun, these gases would be pouring down the slopes, seething out of every crevice and fissure, pooling in craters, but always moving down, down, to the lowest point in the land.

Right now, that point was the lake.

"You can touch the bottom here!" the Doctor exclaimed, his foot brushing the muddy lake bed, "We're almost there!"

Rose struggled forwards. She was trying hard to quell her panic: all around her, there were flashes of taught black muscle and glistening bone. Spiky crests of backbone cut through the water, occasionally preceded by a white dome of knotted skull.

Nearer to shore, the creatures rose out of the water on their thick hind legs, sheeting white spray from their hunchbacked bodies as they lumbered onto solid ground.

"This is mad!" Rose shouted, scrambling towards the shore on all fours, "We'll be eaten alive!"

"Just run!" the Doctor yelled back, ignoring the creatures that crashed up out of the water around him.

The dawn sky was lighter now that the sun was wedging itself by degrees over the mountain tops. Behind them, the halo was only fifteen feet from the lake surface.

Rose pulled herself up, out of the water. She didn't notice the leeches clinging to her arms and neck. One of the creatures, running blind in its desperation to escape the lake, shoved her aside.

"Gotcha." The Doctor said, catching Rose before she slipped on the oozing mud.

Side by side, they raced up the shore line, and into the snow. Rose had no idea of what they were running from. It seemed to her that the biggest threat to their survival was running right beside them, in the form of the creatures.

"Can't we stop?" she gasped, trying hard to keep up with the Doctor.

The snow was fresh, and deeper than the day before. Rose sunk knee-deep into the unmarred drifts. She barely recognised the slope as the one she'd so carelessly tobogganed on the day before.

"If you want to suffocate, yes." The Doctor panted. His whole body felt red-hot. If he hadn't had Rose behind him, depending on him, he would have laid down and died.

And regenerated again, no doubt. But Rose was there, and she was depending on him, and she couldn't regenerate. With a guttural roar, the Doctor forced himself onwards.

Streaming around them, like water flowing around a boulder, the creatures ran. Tens and tens of them, sprinting on their huge webbed feet, as agile and spry as antelope. They didn't throw so much as a sideways glance at the two time travellers.

"When I say so," the Doctor's breath came as a sharp hiss, "Hold your breath. For as long as you can. Got it?"

Rose didn't get it. The creatures that had been so eager to rip them apart the day before were completely disregarding them today. What were they all so panicked about? And why on earth would she need to hold her breath?

"Got it." She agreed anyway, scampering on her hands and feet to keep pace with him.

The Doctor grunted in reply. His attention was almost entirely devoted to watching the creatures ahead of them. The snow a dozen yards in front appeared to be empty, though it wavered as though distorted by a great heat. As soon as the creatures reached this constantly retreating wave of heat, they disappeared. Vanished. Like they'd stepped into a shimmering portal.

Suddenly, there was a metallic shriek from one of the creatures before them. Its huge head convulsed, and the creature toppled over, crashing to the snow.

The Doctor stared at it for a split second before shouting, "Rose! Now!"

By now, half a dozen of the creatures were screaming. One by one, they collapsed. A few struggled pathetically to get up. Others didn't move at all.

"What?" Rose cried, over the screams.

"Hold your breath!" the Doctor shouted. It was useless. She'd never here him over all the commotion.

Almost angrily, he spun on his heel, and grabbed a handful of Rose's hair. He forced her down, so her face was mere inches above the snow. She stared at him with wide, terrified eyes.

"Hold your breath!" the Doctor snarled, waiting until she did so before he hauled her back to her feet.

He released her hair, and took her by the hand instead. A nauseating wave of cold, heavy air washed over them. The Doctor felt his stomach lurch, and his ears popped with the sudden change in pressure.

Rose's lungs burned. Her head felt strange, reminiscent of the night before. She let the Doctor drag her up the mountain side. It felt as though all her energy was being sucked out of her. Greasy grey sparks floated across her vision.

"Rose, Rose."

The sound of her name being called seemed to come from a long way away. Rose opened her eyes, though she didn't remember shutting them.

"You can breath now."

Rose stared up at the jagged thrust of rock beside her. Dimly, she recognised it as part of the outcrop that had halted her toboggan ride the day before.

"What's going on here?" Rose said, when she could manage the words, "This is nothing like you said it would be."

The Doctor sat down next to her. He grinned, but the expression was humourless.

"It shouldn't be like this," he said, "Beta is a dead planet. Though," he grinned again, "I suppose it all depends on what you define 'dead' as."

Rose was feeling better now, stronger. The cool press of snow against her skin was refreshing.

"I wouldn't call monsters springing up all over the bleedin' place _dead_." she said.

"Freak event, that." The Doctor replied, closing his eyes, "An incidental patch of intense heat allows life to flourish. Happens all the time."

"Bloody vicious life." Rose said. She leant back against the tall black rock, and looked back down the slope, towards the lake.

Once again, the landscape was empty. Utterly devoid of life. A sudden thought struck Rose as odd.

"Those creatures are really frightnin', aren't they?" she frowned, "And sort of…smart. Like yesterday, when they were chasing us, they seem to sort of, you know. Know what they were doing."

The Doctor lolled his head towards her. "They'd have to be smart to survive here, I s'pose."

"Yeah, but it's not like there's any humans here, is it? Like you said, we're in the prehistoric era. Humans don't even exist yet, do they?"

The Doctor shook his head, no. His eyes were still shut, and he appeared to be dozing off. Rose punched him lightly in the arm before continuing.

"Hey, if I have to listen to you rambling, you should at least hear me out." She told him, laughing, "What I'm tryin' to say is, if those creatures have never seen humans before, how come they knew what they were doing with us?"

"Well, I suppose it's because… it's probably due to… maybe it's…" the Doctor blinked, then stared at Rose, "That's a good point, actually."

Rose grinned, "Thanks. Hey, what are they, anyway? I've never seen anything like them."

"It's hard to say." The Doctor said. He was frowning slightly, and had that faraway look in his eyes, like he was distracted by some perturbing thought, "What I've seen of their dental and anatomical structure, they're almost certainly amphibious."

"What, they're frogs?" Rose couldn't help but laugh. The thought of being hunted by giant frogs was just too ridiculous.

"I'd say caudata. Salamanders. There's more to them then we can see, you know. They're covered in a layer of transparent skin, for one. They have three rows of serrated teeth on their top jaws, and only one row on the bottom, a classic sign of amphibia. That, and the presence of protruding gills and a tail, indicates," the Doctor glanced at Rose, and shrugged, "That they're salamanders."

Rose thought about this. "I had an axolotl once." She said, "And I know they're salamanders. But it never once got out of its tank and tried to eat me."

"Did you know all amphibians swallow their food whole?" the Doctor wondered, knowing full-well that she didn't, "All those scary teeth are used for nothing more than trapping prey in its mouth. They gulp it down, and it gets digested in their stomachs."

"So what?"

"So, did you notice the size of their necks? There's no way they could swallow something as big as you."

"Uh-huh. And I'm big, am I?" Rose queried, glowering

"No!" the Doctor said hurriedly, "Not at all. I just meant that uh, they couldn't eat anything nearly as large as a human. Any human, not just you. Couldn't eat big old me, either, ey?" he gave a fake laugh, "You know, I bet the biggest things they eat aren't any larger than a football."

Rose was still glaring at him when her stomach growled onerously.

"I see all this talk of food is making you hungry." The Doctor said. He too was feeling better for the rest, and dreading the walk back to the alcove. Especially if Rose was right, and the TARDIS was missing. He had no idea of what they would do, then.

"I haven't eaten for a day and a half," Rose said hotly, "I didn't get a chance to have breakfast yesterday, you know."

"You ought to have brought something with you. I always do."

"Well, sorry I didn't prepare for a bloody safari!" Rose snapped, rising to her feet. She was always irascible when she missed a meal, "What did you bring, anyway? A flippin' banana?"

After one last withering glare at the Doctor, Rose stormed off up the slope. The Doctor stared after her in wonder.

"Rose!" he shouted at last, when it was apparent she wasn't coming back.

She didn't reply. The Doctor climbed awkwardly to his feet.

"Rose!" he shouted again, trudging after her.

This time, Rose paused. She didn't say anything, and kept her back to him, but he took it to mean that she would wait for him to catch up.

When he was only a few feet behind her, Rose said, "We have no food."

Her voice was low, and forcibly calm. The Doctor would have preferred her yelling at him.

"We have no shelter." Rose continued, "And no way off this _planet_."

"We don't know that for sure. Maybe you just overlooked the TARDIS last night. It's a big mountain. Easy enough to miss a little thing like the TARDIS."

"The only reason I overlooked it is because it's gone." Rose scowled, still not looking at the Doctor, "And what's more, whatever you say otherwise, those creatures were hunting us yesterday."

"Maybe. But not for food." The Doctor said. Rose was back to stomping up the mountain slope, and he was struggling to keep up.

"I suppose they wanted a play date." Rose said dryly.

"Arguing isn't going to make things any easier, you know."

Rose was silent. Her shoulders were hunched and stiff. She was no less angry for the lack of quarrelling.

"I get it." The Doctor said after a while, feeling he needed to say something, "You're hungry, and muddy, and cold. And you were covered in leeches-"

"Leeches!" Rose shrieked, cutting him off, "What leeches?"

"The, um," the Doctor looked at her dumbly, "Uh, they uh, dropped off you when we went through the em, carbon monoxide."

"Why didn't you tell me there were leeches on me?" Rose cried.

"I didn't uh, think it was a good time to mention it."

She stared at him, mouth agape. She made several attempts to speak, then gave up and shrugged helplessly.

"You're bloody unbelievable." Rose said at last, voice faint.

"Thanks." the Doctor grinned.

By some unspoken agreement, they were both headed for the alcove. Rose was silent as she led the way. She was in no mood to talk. The Doctor trailed a short way behind her, doing his best to keep pace. There was a lot of things about Beta that bugged him, a lot of things he didn't like, but they were all things he could explain.

And then there was something else, something bigger. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on. He was also experiencing the unfamiliar feeling that Rose was right.

"Well, here we are."

He glanced up at the sound of her voice.

"That was quick." The Doctor commented. He was actually a little surprised at how fast they'd reached the alcove.

The sight of the small, sheltered bay was unmistakable. As it had been the day before, when they'd first stepped out of the TARDIS, the snow was perfect and untouched. It glittered in the morning light.

"You see? It's gone. I didn't overlook it at all." Rose said, smiling smugly.

"I wonder where she's gotten to." The Doctor mused, stroking his imaginary beard.

He took a step closer to the edge of the alcove, and peered down at the ravine. The rock wall wasn't quite as sheer there, and the horizontal crests of rock were closer together. If he squinted, it almost looked like stairs…

"Do you see something down there?" Rose wondered, inching closer to the Doctor. As anxious as she was for any sign of the TARDIS, she was sure to keep him between herself and the edge of the cliff.

"Um, Rose?"

The Doctor turned away from the ravine, and looked at Rose. At least, she thought he was looking at her. Or was there something else…?

"What?"

"Would you mind turning around?"

With the fluid motion of one who had done so many times before, the Doctor raised his hands above his head. Rose was now certain he wasn't looking at her.

Slowly, frowning, she repeated his movements.

"Oh," Rose raised her eyebrows, "What are Slitheens doing here?"

xxx xxx

_Yes, I know. Bad ending. It's not really as bad as it sounds, I promise.  
Oh yeah, and if you've never done shots of Jagermeister, don't start now. The only thing I remember about Doctor Who on Saturday is that Rose was a dog. Or something. And saying, "_I love you the Doctor."

_Sorry this took so long to put up! If my bf isn't fired, the next chapter will be up tomorrow or Thursday. Otherwise I'm hand-holding._

_Cheers._


	8. Ravine

_**A/N: **This chapter has been finished for a couple of days. My stupid 'net provider is messing things up, so I haven't been able to post. So, sorry about the delay. Again! I won't promise, but the next chap is nearly finished, so it should be up soon. Sorry again. Hey uh, did anyone else think Mickey/Ricky and Jake had a thing going? Weird. Enjoy this if you can!_

_xxx xxx_

"No sudden movements."

The Doctor whispered, tipping his head towards Rose.

"I _know_!" she whispered back, scowling, "I'm not an idiot!"

Side by side, their backs to the ravine, Rose and the Doctor laced their hands over their heads.

On the opposite side of the alcove, five huge Slitheen raised their clubs ponderously.

"And technically, Rose," the Doctor whispered, leaning towards her, "They're Raxacoricotallapatorius, not Slitheen. The Slitheen were a solitary family of the Raxacoricotallapatorius species, exiled from their home world."

Rose gave him a Look.

"I'm just saying." The Doctor grumbled.

The lead Raxacoricotallapatorius grunted, and waved its club at the time travellers. Rose wrinkled her nose at them: she didn't recall them being so ugly. The Slitheens had looked a little like hairless green gorillas, crossed with pigs.

These, whatever they were called, looked more like upright toads. Their skin was brownish green, and rough with wrinkles and scaly warts. The arms, although long, didn't come close to the ground in the way Rose remembered the Slitheens' doing, and the head was distinctly flatter, broader.

Only the eyes were the same. Huge and watery, completely black and strangely sentient. They glistened under thick brow ridges.

"What are they doin'?" Rose frowned. The Raxacoricotallapatorius grunted and squealed amongst themselves, but made no move to approach their captives.

The Doctor shrugged, "They seem to be discussing what to do with us."

"Don't you speak Raxacor- cori- apawhatus, or whatever?" Rose threw him a sideways glance, "Don't you speak everything?"

"I do speak Raxacoricotallapatorian. They're just not speaking it." The Doctor shrugged.

He wondered whether they would mind if he sat down. Or laid down. He was feeling terribly tired, and so, so cold…

"Are you alright?"

Rose's voice roused him. The Doctor shook his head to clear it, and smiled at her.

"Just tired. Taking their time, aren't they?"

Rose wasn't to be satisfied. "Why didn't you answer me when I was talking to you before? You can't go to sleep right now, anyway. Not on your feet. You'll fall over the edge off the cliff."

The Doctor stared at her bleakly, "What did you say that I didn't answer?"

"I said, maybe we're not on Beta. Maybe this is the Raxapotalotalan planet." Rose said. She glanced at the squeaking aliens, "That would explain all this."

"This isn't Raxacoricotallapatorius. This is Beta. Something is wrong here, I know. But it's still Beta."

"But how do you know?" Rose queried, "All you've got to go off is a few big mountains and a dirty ol' lake. There isn't exactly a street directory here, or a big neon sign saying this is Beta. How can you be so sure?"

"Because I am!" the Doctor snarled.

He glowered at Rose. Across the alcove, the Raxacoricotallapatorius regarded them curiously.

"I was just asking." Rose said softly. Her pulse pounded in her ears. The Doctor had never spoken to her like that before, ever.

The Raxacoricotallapatorius glanced at each other, then back at Rose and the Doctor. One of them sniggered. The biggest creature, who seemed to be the leader, stepped forwards. There was a dark brown mark, the size and shape of a Raxacoricotallapatorius hand, printed on the centre of its chest.

"Oh, what do you want?" the Doctor snapped.

Handprint stuck out its pale tongue, and jabbed the club at him.

"Guff." It said.

The Doctor frowned, "What?"

"Guff." Handprint repeated. This time, it stretched out its long arm, and wriggled the club in the empty air behind the Doctor and Rose.

"He's telling you to jump off the cliff." Rose said sulkily.

"We're not jumping." The Doctor replied, voice firm.

Rose smiled to herself. "Who said anything about me?"

Handprint growled. It turned to look at its companions, who were snickering.

"Guff!" Handprint roared, swing the club at them.

The other Raxacoricotallapatorius winced. One by one, they brushed passed Rose, and vaulted over the edge of the cliff.

"Look, I shouldn't have yelled at you." The Doctor said, inwardly rolling his eyes, "And I'm trying my best to get us off this planet. But the last thing I need right now is for you to be questioning everything I do, like you could understand it even if I explained."

Rose took a deep breath, and counted to ten. The Doctor was too busy watching the Raxacoricotallapatorius plunge down the cliff face to notice the steam hissing from her ears.

Far below and out of sight, there were several dull thuds.

"And your best is what? Getting us captured by Raxa- whatever they are!" Rose fumed.

"We're not captured." The Doctor said, just a Handprint prodded his chest with the stone club.

"Guff. Hruk." Handprint grunted, pushing the Doctor closer to the cliff's edge.

"Looks like you're wrong again."

Rose was doing her best to keep her expression smug. In truth, she was scared out of her mind, and suspected the Doctor was, too. Rose was worried that if they didn't do as the Raxacoricotallapatorius wanted, and jump over the edge, that Handprint would bludgeon them to death with the club. Either way, she was on the loosing side.

"Wrong again? When was I wrong the first time?" the Doctor demanded. The heel of his waterlogged sneakers was pressed to the cliff's edge.

"And you call yourself a genius! You've been wrong about practically everything!" Rose cried, "You just can't admit it! Beta's uninhabited, you said. The creatures aren't real, you said. And this is hardly the biggest mountain in the universe!"

Though she had to admit, staring down at the zigzag white line of the river hundreds of feet below, that height was only relative when you were falling.

"There's a ledge down there. You might want to check it yourself, though, since I'm wrong all the time." The Doctor huffed, looking down at the ravine.

Rose leant back. Five feet below the edge of the alcove, there was a short lip of rock, protruding a foot from the rock face.

Handprint roared. It looked like it was getting ready to bludgeon them.

"Okay, okay," the Doctor shook his head, "We're going already."

He sat on the edge of the alcove, and swung his legs over the side.

"Be careful." Rose told him, and regretted it instantly.

The Doctor slid down the short rock wall to the ledge. "Easy." He said, looking up at Rose.

She rolled her eyes.

"I was wrong about some things." he said, as Rose lowered herself to the ledge, "Like the creatures. Obviously you didn't imagine them, and I was wrong o say you did. See, I can admit it."

Her eyes boring into the empty air, Rose squeaked, "Only against overwhelming odds."

"Don't go around criticising me for not admitting when I'm wrong if you're not prepared to admit you were wrong about me not admitting I was wrong." the Doctor said seriously.

"Just get moving, will you?" Rose frowned. She gulped, though her mouth was dry, and tried to focus on her anger, rather than her fear.

Handprint plopped down on the ledge next to them. It nudged Rose with the club, then pointed out the nearest ledge.

She glanced at the Doctor. He made a face. The second ledge was a long finger of black rock, eight foot under the first. Below the rock, there was nothing but air for a hundred feet.

"I don't suppose we have much choice." The Doctor grimaced. It wasn't that he was afraid of heights, he told himself. At nine hundred years of age, there wasn't really much that frightened him. No, it was more the fickleness of the entire situation. And he was worried about Rose, of course.

Yes, that was it. He wasn't frightened in the slightest.

"I'm not afraid," he told Rose, "Are you?"

Rose looked at him with wide eyes. Her hands clutched at the featureless rock wall at her back. There was a sheen of cold sweat on her face.

"No." she said, voice strangled, "Of course not, everyone knows I'm braver than you. And anyway, what's there to be afraid of?"

Aside from the three hundred foot drop, inches away.

Handprint nudged Rose again, more impatiently this time. The Raxacoricotallapatorius was studying them carefully, as though it was weighing up its options. Continue being patient, or push them over the edge of the cliff. From the bottom of the ravine, the other Raxacoricotallapatorius stared up at them, wondering what was taking so long.

"If you apologize, I'll catch you when you fall." The Doctor said, frowning slightly at Rose.

She glared back at him.

"Have it your way." He said. And he jumped.

Rose said a prayer to a God she wasn't sure existed, and followed him.

Half an hour later, dripping with sweat and trembling from exertion, she reached the bottom of the ravine. Her eyes glistened with unwelcome tears. Her ears buzzed with the constant throb of her pulse.

"Nothing to be afraid of, huh?" the Doctor said, watching her carefully.

Rose fell back against the rock face. Daleks and Slitheen be damned, she had never done anything that hard. She'd never even imagined anyone could feel as exhausted and weak with horror as she had done.

"You better find the TARDIS soon." Rose muttered.

The Doctor had reached the bottom a few minutes earlier. His own feeling of weakness was fading. His anger was long gone. There had been a dozen times when, crawling down the rock face, that he and Rose had helped each other.

But that was there, on the chaotic edge of survival. The ravine floor was a different world, a million years later. The rules were different now. His pride took top priority once again.

"I'd find it sooner if you didn't keep slowing me down." He told Rose.

The Raxacoricotallapatorius, who had been lounging against the boulders strewn across the ravine, snapped to attention when Handprint thundered to earth.

"Vak! Vak!" he bellowed.

Grumbling, the Raxacoricotallapatorius rose to their feet, and shuffled along the gully in the direction of the lake.

"They don't look too happy with you." The Doctor said to Handprint.

Handprint bristled. It loomed over the Doctor, suddenly appearing much larger than the nine foot he estimated it to be.

"Maybe you can understand us, after all. No offence meant, hey?" the Doctor grinned.

The Raxacoricotallapatorius leader roared, and shoved the time lord with a long fingered hand. The Doctor reeled back, clutching his chest. His breath hissed through ground teeth.

"That was uncalled for." He gasped, bent almost double.

Rose watched, bemused, as Handprint trundled over to the Doctor. It seemed to aggravate the Raxacoricotallapatorius whenever he spoke. Rose could understand that; the Doctor aggravated a lot of people when he spoke. But she didn't think Handprint knew what was being said (also a common phenomenon), but it treated everything as an insult.

That was what had her baffled.

"What'd I say?" the Doctor wheezed, as Handprint hulked towards him.

Handprint snorted. Its big head swung back and forth rhythmically, like a charmed python.

"If you'll just give me a chance to explain…"

"Doctor, don't!" Rose cried, taking a step forwards, "Keep you bleedin' mouth shut!"

Both the Doctor and Handprint turned to stare at her. The Raxacoricotallapatorius tossed its head up, and snorted at the air. It seemed confused.

Rose felt her face go red, now all attention was on her. Apparently, some explanation was needed. "The noise, you're voice. The creatures make the same sound," she said, "Right before they attack. They think you're threatening them."

Sure enough, Handprint was grunting again. This time at Rose.

"How are we supposed to talk, then?" the Doctor asked.

"I don't know! You're the genius!"

The Doctor sighed. "Try shouting." He said, after a moment's thought.

"Alright!" Rose shouted.

"Good thing you're so brilliant, Rose!" the Doctor yelled back.

Handprint snorted. It didn't know quite what to make of these creatures. Certainly, they weren't a big threat to any able-bodied Raxacoricotallapatorius, and they didn't smell particularly tasty. Even stranger, they seemed quite willing to accompany the hunting party on its trek back to home base. Handprint wondered what the rest of the colony would make of these bizarre creatures.

"Do you forgive me!" Rose shouted, as she and the Doctor trailed after the lead Raxacoricotallapatorius.

She couldn't help but feel that somehow the sentiment of the question was lost by yelling. The Doctor didn't appear bothered.

"Of course! What are you sorry for!" he called back, from a foot away.

Rose grinned at him. "I'm sorry I had to rescue you again!"

Handprint blinked at them. It had never encountered anything quite so vocal as these two foreign critters. The small, yellow one was bad enough. But the brown one…! It made enough noise to alert every creature within five miles of its presence. Surely, they must have been new to the mountain. Survival here depended on your ability to be silent, and they were anything but.

"Maak." Handprint said, pointing at the Doctor.

"Maak tuura!" the Doctor replied, his voice indignant.

Rose stared at him. "Did you just speak to it?" she demanded.

The Doctor huffed. "He called me noisy. I just said there was no need for- oh."

He looked at Rose, and then at Handprint. The Raxacoricotallapatorius didn't appear to have noticed anything awry.

"It's ancient Raxin." The Doctor said at last, his voice still raised to a shout, "It's Raxin, the language almost universally spoken by amphibians thirty thousand years before you were born. I haven't used it for centuries."

"I thought you said you couldn't understand them?" Rose frowned. She wished the Doctor would just hurry up and figure out what was up with Beta, before she went crazy from all the contradictions.

"I couldn't. I don't think they're speaking pure Raxin, just something that borrows bits and pieces of it. You know, the way that French borrows bits of Latin, and SMS text borrows bits of English." The Doctor shrugged, "I could always just ask our friend Handprint, anyway."

"G 4 it." Rose said.

"Zu kak-tuu Raxin?" the Doctor shouted to Handprint.

"Bwook?"

The Raxacoricotallapatorius blinked at him. It certainly didn't look like it understood.

"Z'hup tuu kak?" the Doctor said, then looked at Rose, "My grammar is bad. The last time I spoke this was for my finals."

Rose couldn't help but laugh at the thought of a teenage Doctor blathering away in some alien language in front of a panel of scowling teachers. She wondered if time lords crammed before exams.

"Tuu-kak Rax. Nyak Rax. Kik," Handprint spread its arms wide to encompass the landscape, "Rax. Kyak?"

"Nyak Gallifryan. Gren nyak the Doctor." The Doctor grinned.

"Nyak Kermk. Vik mak bro sillia. Vira ca caposa. Qwa gren et lac?"

"Lac Rose." The Doctor turned back to Rose, "Alright, Rose. This is Kermk. The good news is, you can call them 'Rax'. That's what they call themselves. Good how they've shortened the name, isn't it?"

Rose nodded in agreement. She wished the TARDIS was nearby to translate for her. As often as she saved his life, Rose couldn't help but feel the Doctor was right when he said she slowed him down.

"What about those creatures? The invisible ones." The Doctor asked Kermk, in Raxin.

"Bad creatures! Abominable! They are a plague, suitable only for killing. The Big Barter calls them sick rats." Kermk replied in his native tongue. The language varied enough from Raxin that the Doctor had to spend a few moments working it out.

"That's interesting." He said to Rose, switching back to English, "He refers to a person named Big Barter, who must be their leader. Typically Raxacoricotallapatorian. Even their hierarchy revolves around who can make the best profit."

"That sounds like the Slitheens, alright." Rose agreed.

"He also says that the Big Barter calls the creatures sick rats, which is odd. The way he pronounced it, though, it sounded almost human. Sick rats." The Doctor mused, "Nonsensical, really."

"They didn't look sick to me." Rose grumbled.

"My friend here says they don't look sick." The Doctor told Kermk.

"Not _sick rats._" Kermk replied, "Sicker axe."

The Raxacoricotallapatorius seemed to have some difficulty pronouncing the words. The Doctor frowned at him, trying to understand.

"Did he just say Sycorax?" Rose demanded.

"Nik! Nik!" Kermk nodded emphatically, "Sicker axe."

"Well then." The Doctor sighed, "We really do have a problem. Sycorax competing with space pigs for a planet that shouldn't be inhabited at all for another three million years. And our friend Kermk speaking a language that shouldn't exist for another three million on top of that."

"There's something weird going on." Rose agreed.

It looked like Rose would be saving the universe on an empty stomach this time. Her mother would be appalled. She smiled to herself, and turned back to the Doctor. Rose could hardly wait to get the mystery solved and get back to earth, to have Jackie make a fuss over her.

"There's good news, though," the Doctor said, "The TARDIS is probably back at Kermk's home base. We'll be able to get this sorted out, as soon as we get there."

"What's the bad news, then?" Rose wondered, not fooled by his cheery attitude.

The Doctor glanced at her. She knew him too well, despite not really knowing him at all. His concentration slipped from Rose, to the ache in his swollen ribs.

"I think I'm going to have to regenerate."

xxx xxx  
_It's not a cliff hanger if I post the next chapter really soon. Which I should. I can't shake the feeling that this story is getting worse.  
I hope not. Anyway, the next chap should be better.  
Doctor Who was awesome last night. I love zeppelins. And I was sober! Whoot!_


	9. Ilium Neocort

_**A/N: **I'm really happy with this chapter. I think it turned out much better than some of the previous installments.  
Ilium Neocort is the name of my dog's ear drops. But it's sounds good, so I used it for the mountain. Let me know what you think!_

_xxx xxx_

Lengths of tanned skins stretched between tall bone columns to make walls. The room was large, nine by fifteen feet. The bone struts climbed higher and higher, eventually lost to the inky blackness of the cave ceiling, though the skins finished ten feet above the ground.

"Damp in here, isn't it?" the Doctor remarked.

A thin veneer of water coated the stone ground. In the centre of the room, steam billowed from a deep, circular pit. Wisps of vapour rose from the water on the floor, and the air was thick and wet. It felt to Rose as though she were trying to breath underwater.

"I'm sweating like a space pig." She replied.

The Doctor gave her a sympathetic smile, "Still," he said, "It's better than being out in the snow."

For once, they were being treated like guests, rather than prisoners. Once they'd reached the Rax camp, a cleverly hidden cave on the south east side of the lake, Kermk had given them bowls of steaming grey gruel and a plate of short, spiky sticks, before hurrying off to inquire about the TARDIS.

Rose shrugged. She picked out a stick from the wooden plate, and held it up to inspect. It was tacky, like it was coated in honey, and didn't smell at all bad.

"What's this, then?" she wondered, stomach growling.

"Try it. You'll probably like it." The Doctor said. He was using his fingers to scrape grey mush from one of the bowls.

"It's got to be better than that." Rose said, wrinkling her nose when he licked his fingers.

"Oh, but this is good." The Doctor grinned.

They were sitting on what Rose supposed was a bed, in front of the steaming water pit. The bed was made in the same style as the walls; a rectangle of animal hide stretched taut between solid bone supports. It sat about three foot above the floor. Above it, resting at the Rax's head-height, there was another bed. The skin of this one was bowed in the middle, as though it was being used as a shelf.

"Well it looks disgusting." Rose told him, half laughing, "You're braver than I am for eating it."

She took a bite of the stick. It was sweet, and crunchy, with a subtle flavour of chicken. Rose's mouth watered at the taste.

"You like it, then?" the Doctor wondered. His expression was eager.

"Mm," Rose nodded, cramming more into her already full mouth, "'S goo'."

The Rax cave was large, and resembled a stock market as much as home. According to Kermk, who lived there with his four brothers, the Rax colony in the mountains was made up of twenty adult animals, and three infants. In the centre of the cave, the Rax chief sat, on top of a pile of his possessions.

The other Rax, divided into family groups, made and gathered items to trade with Big Barter. Every so often, traders would come from the main Rax colony to swap items. The chief, Big Barter, was essential at times like these, because it was believed that he, out of all the Rax, would attain the best bargains for his colony.

"You want to know what it is?" the Doctor asked, leaning closer to Rose.

"Wha' ?" she answered, still chewing industriously.

The Doctor grinned. "Moths legs."

Rose forced herself to swallow. She didn't want to spit food all over Kermk's floor, after all.

"Moths legs." She repeated slowly.

"Yeah. Tasty, aren't they?"

Carefully, Rose lowered the plate. She'd only eaten two or three. Four at the most. Maybe five. She stared at the Doctor, who was still sucking grey mush off his fingers.

Ignoring the toxic glare she was giving him, he said, "You'll probably find that moths are all there is to eat here. Unless you want roast Sycorax. You shouldn't be put off by the thought of eating insects, though. Moths are high in protein and energy. Even in some earth cultures, they're treated as a delicacy."

"That's a lie." Rose said firmly, "And you knew that I would never have eaten that if I'd known it was moths."

"You did ask me what it was."

"But why'd you have to tell me?" Rose cried. As hungry as she was, moths legs were not going to be on the menu, ever. Not once she knew what they were. She eyed the bowls filled with gruel.

"I can't be certain," the Doctor said, catching her eye, "But I think this is ground up moth abdomens. You might want to stick with the legs."

Rose made a strangled sound, and flopped back on the bed. There had been a point on the walk to the cave, just after the Doctor announced his looming regeneration, where Kermk had told them not to speak. The ravine had merged with a much wider gorge, which eventually fed out onto the lake.

"This is a game trail." The Doctor had whispered to Rose, "He doesn't want us stirring up the game."

So the rest of the walk had been in silence. For the first ten minutes, Rose hadn't been able to get the thought of the Doctor regenerating again out of her mind. Again, already. She hadn't even been able to find out why; he looked healthy enough.

Then, when Kermk had shown them how to navigate the narrow, rocky path that made up the lake's east shore, Rose had been forced to divert her attention from the Doctor.

At last when they reached the cave, its entrance shadowed by a jutting lip of rock, and further concealed by a long wall of the mottled dark skins, there had been other things to discuss. The food, the culture, what they would do when all this was over.

Lying on the bed, Rose suddenly realised she had yet to find out how the Doctor could possibly need to regenerate.

"Five broken ribs, fractured breast bone, perforation of right myocardial muscle, low grade damage to several internal organs. Pending necrodermic infection on shoulder." The Doctor said, before Rose could ask. He coughed wetly. "Primary symptoms of pneumonia."

Rose sat up. "What? How? Sh- show me."

"It's too damn hot for snow gear, anyway." The Doctor muttered. He shrugged out of his thick snow coat, and unbuttoned his suit jacket.

Cautiously, he lifted his shirt. The bruise on his chest was dark purple, and shaped like a butterfly. An blackish elliptical smudge across his breast bone formed the butterfly's body, with its wings blossoming out in mottled, gangrenous colours over his ribs. The flesh below his left shoulder was swollen, and dotted with oozing bite marks.

It looked bad, but somehow it didn't fit Rose's impression of the Doctor's injuries. You didn't die from bruises.

"But what… what's the big deal? You can…surely you don't really need to…" she left the rest unsaid. The Doctor was already such a different man from the one who had charmed her in London a year ago. She didn't want… she didn't know…

Heck, she didn't know what to make of it. Rose needed answers.

The Doctor tugged his shirt down before replying, "You know when you thought I left you, yesterday, when the Sycorax were after us?"

"Yes?"

"I fell. Off the cliff. If the TARDIS had been close by, I would have regenerated then. Luckily for both of us, I didn't. Rose," the Doctor said, pressing a hand to her cheek, "I can heal this, if I rest. I don't have to regenerate. Which is good, because I don't want to."

He stopped, embarrassed. Here he was, talking to a twenty year old earthling about his feelings on regeneration. The other time lords would laugh at him.

"I don't want you to, either." Rose blurted. She looked mortified at her own words. "I mean, I mean, uh, it just seems like such a lot to go through for really, uh, minor injuries. Like being reborn over a paper cut, in't it?"

"Something like that, I suppose." The Doctor said.

In the silence that followed, Rose found herself staring at the floor. At the ceiling. At the bed. Anywhere but the Doctor.

"You know what's funny?" she said, after what felt like an eternity.

"What?" the Doctor replied, quicker than he should have.

"This bed," Rose said, still staring at the taut skin, "If it had a mouth and eyes, it'd look just like Cassandra."

The Doctor snorted with laughter, "Cassandra?"

"The last _pure_ human." Rose said, imitating Cassandra's sultry voice.

She giggled. The Doctor stared at her for a moment, an uncertain grin pulling at the corners of his mouth, before bursting into laughter. Rose laughed with him, tears rolling down her cheeks. The Doctor's ribs throbbed, and still he couldn't stop laughing. Finally, giggling inanely, they both collapsed back on the bed.

"You humans are mad." The Doctor gasped.

"Thanks."

Rose wasn't sure whether she was happy or upset. She blinked to clear the tears from her eyes. With his head pressed to hers, the Doctor reached down, and took Rose's hand.

"Let's not argue anymore, hey?" he said, clasping her hand tightly.

"I wouldn't have to argue with you if you weren't wrong all the time." Rose told him, smiling.

He grinned back at her.

There was a groan of folding leather, and Kermk lumbered into the room. He was blinking rapidly, an action which Rose had quickly learnt meant he was perplexed.

"There is a problem," Kermk said, addressing the Doctor, "You need to talk with Big Barter, I think. He is waiting."

"What'd he say?" Rose wondered, her voice raised.

The Doctor translated for her. To Kermk, he said, "What's the problem?"

Kermk blinked. His huge eyes rolled in their sockets, exposing the whites. "It's just a little problem. Big Barter will explain."

"What do you think?" the Doctor shouted to Rose, "Should we talk to the chief?"

Rose made a face. "Do we 'ave a choice?"

"Don't think so."

"Alright then. Off to see the wizard." Rose sat up, and slid off the bed.

The Doctor followed her. Kermk was waiting for them by the entrance. Apart from his continuous blinking, and a twitching pulse in his throat, he was perfectly motionless. Very, very anxious.

When they reached him, Kermk ushered them out of the room. The cave was planned so that all rooms led out into the main hall, which stretched from the front entrance, to Big Barter's trade centre, to the storage area in the cave's rear.

Running down the middle of the main hall was a deep, narrow trench, cut into the solid rock. Like the steam pits in each room, this trench was filled with geothermal water. Vapour plumed out of the trench, obscuring anything more than a few yards away.

"Keep your wits up." Kermk warned, as he lead Rose and the Doctor along the hall.

The centre of the cave was bustling with activity. It was a world apart from the frozen desert outside. Big Barter looked almost regal, perched on his sloping tower of junk. Rax scurried around the pile, armed with various articles, their eyes rolling madly.

Big Barter looked almost like one of those multi-armed Hindu gods as he plucked this and that item from the frantic Rax, and picked out seemingly random objects from his pile to replace them. He seemed utterly calm, almost lost through the haze of steam.

"They're space pigs, alright." The Doctor laughed.

Rose didn't share his enthusiasm. She squinted up at Big Barter. He was the only Rax to wear clothes, a magnificent yet peculiar cloak that billowed around him. It looked to be made of tiny scales, all pinned onto a thin, translucent skin.

"Big Barter Ilium Neocort," Kermk croaked, standing close to the chief in order to be heard, "I show to you the noisy ones."

"He's still calling us noisy." The Doctor said to Rose, with a sigh.

Big Barter gestured for Kermk to move. He peered down at the time travellers.

"Kermk has told me you speak both the language of the Rax, and that of the Sycorax. Is this true?" Big Barter leaned closer towards them.

Rose was suddenly aware that all other noise in the hall had ceased. All eyes were on them.

"Well, no. I speak a language which is close to yours, though." the Doctor said, mixing what little he'd learnt of Rax in with the ancient Raxin. He hoped it was enough to be understood clearly.

"I would like to know more about you, noisy one. But first, we have a problem. Kermk tells me that the sky rock is yours." Big Barter said, nostrils flared.

"It's called the TARDIS. And yes, its ours." The Doctor frowned. He didn't like where this was going, "What's the problem?"

Big Barter leant back on his tower. His shining eyes flicked between Rose and the Doctor, settling on the latter. "As you may know, Ilium Neocort is far, far away from the major trade colonies. Traders come here from Gymnophiona only every three moons."

"What's he saying?" Rose wondered. She was frustrated. The watery eyes that followed her every movement did nothing to abate her temper.

"He's just talking about trade." The Doctor told her quickly. To Big Barter, he said, "I didn't know that. What's it got to do with the TARDIS?"

"Well. We are prosperous. We have much food, and a healthy population. In wet season, many females make their pilgrimage here. But," Big Barter leant forwards again, "Being so isolated, we have little opportunity to trade with other colonies. We lack supplies of skins and timbre, which are both necessary for our survival."

"Let me guess." The Doctor said blandly, "When you trade, you depend on getting a top-notch bargain. And to get that bargain, you need to trade something really good."

"You are not so stupid, after all." Big Barter said, his mouth down-turned in a classic Raxacoricotallapatorius smile.

"And so you traded the TARDIS for provisions." The Doctor sighed.

"Not yet. But it is no longer here, I fear. The traders left this morning, while Kermk and his brothers were hunting. My son is accompanying the traders back to Gymnophiona, to see what items he might obtain in exchange for your sky rock." Big Barter told him.

"Rose," The Doctor turned to his companion, "The TARDIS is gone. The chief's son is carting it off to the markets right as we speak. He's going to trade it for fire wood."

"What?" Rose cried, "Oh, those idiots! They may as well trade it for magic beans!"

Big Barter pointed a gnarled finger at Rose. "Is that one female?" he demanded.

"Of course she is!" the Doctor snapped.

"And you are male?"

The Doctor nodded wordlessly. Big Barter smiled at him, and ushered Kermk over. The chief Rax said something about trade potentials, and the Doctor turned back to Rose.

"I don't know what we're going to do." He said, "Do you have any ideas?"

"Why don't we just go follow his son? If we leave soon, we'd probably catch up with him. Get the TARDIS back no worries." Rose said.

"_That_ is why I like you." The Doctor grinned, "That's a brilliant idea. You always have such dumb luck, randomly stumbling upon a good plan, don't you?"

"What do you mean, dumb luck?" Rose demanded.

Big Barter interrupted before the Doctor could reply, "I have an idea. Kermk will take you to Gymnophiona. He will show you to Domo Barter. A breeding pair like you would fetch a high price, ey? But I will not sell you: no one else has noisy creatures that speak like us."

"Breeding pair?" the Doctor repeated.

"Dumb luck?" Rose fumed.

"Instead," Big Barter continued, "Kermk will bring you back here. Your sky rock, too. My son will bargain for provisions with Domo Barter in exchange for your next season's offspring. That way, everyone wins. You can have your sky rock back, we get our provisions, and you won't have the problem of noisy offspring. What do you think?"

The Doctor wasn't sure. He an Rose certainly weren't a breeding pair. It was impossible. But agreeing with Big Barter would be a good way to get what they wanted.

"Let me discuss it with Rose." He said, smiling briefly at the chief.

Rose was furious. She glared lasers at the Doctor as he explained the situation. When he was finished, as she had to say was;

"Dumb luck?"

"Are you still thinking about that? I didn't mean you were dumb. For one of your species, you're really quite genius." The Doctor said cheerily.

"Just not as smart as you, right?" Rose bristled, "I'm still just a stupid ape to you. This whole trip, you've done nothing but rub it in. You're a genius. Anything I come up with is just _dumb, ape luck_."

"That's not true!" the Doctor protested, "You're brilliant, really. Rose, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to say it like that."

Rose scowled. She was too angry to speak.

"She says it sounds great." The Doctor told Big Barter.

"Very well, then. Kermk will get things ready. Do you need to rest, or can you leave immediately?" the chief wondered. Even to Rose, who had no idea what was going on, he looked keen.

The Doctor licked his lips. He didn't want to ask Rose anything else, not while she was in her current mood. "I suppose-"

"Sycorax."

There was a murmur from the assembled Rax. All eyes swivelled to Rose.

"Sycorax." She repeated, and snapped her teeth.

"What is your female trying to say?" Big Barter queried. He didn't look impressed.

"Rose," the Doctor turned to her, "What in Socrates name are you doing?"

Rose didn't reply. Instead, she snatched the loose hem of the Doctor's shirt, and yanked it up. Even in the murky, wavering light of the cave, the bite marks and bruise stood out.

"Sycorax." Rose said for the third time. She patted the bite marks with the palm of her hand.

The Doctor hissed, barely refraining from yelling out. He tugged the shirt end from Rose's hands, and pulled it back down over the bruise.

"You have been bitten," Big Barter shook his head, "You are not well. Domo Barter will not like it if you are damaged."

"I'm fine." The Doctor told him, teeth clenched, "Domo Barter has nothing to worry about."

"It is not Domo Barter that will worry. It is me. The Sycorax bite can be very painful. I worry you will not make the journey to Gymnophiona." Big Barter said.

Kermk stepped up to the tower, and squealed something that the Doctor couldn't understand. Big Barter smiled grimly.

"Kermk made a suggestion." He said, when the other Rax had finished squealing, "He says that perhaps only the female should go to Gymnophiona, and you remain here. In this way, you can heal, and be ready for the breeding season."

"Oh, you have got to be joking." The Doctor groaned. He translated the conversation for Rose, who was looking smug.

"Yeah, I think I agree with him. You're injured." Rose smirked, "You need to rest, like you said. And besides, this all seems pretty simple. Even a dumb ape like me should be able to work it out, right?"

The Doctor muttered something about women under his breath. Louder, he said, "It's dangerous."

"You said Kermk is going, right? He can protect me." Rose said.

"He's a space pig, for God's sake!" the Doctor exclaimed, "You need protecting _from_ him, not _by_ him!"

"I'm going, and you're staying, and that's that." Rose said, "Now, if you don't mind, I have a trip to get ready for."

Even without understanding the words, Big Barter seemed to understand the outcome. He raised his brow ridges at the Doctor.

"Females," the chief grinned, exposing the top row of his tiny, serrated teeth, "But don't worry. Females do this sort of thing all the time. But no matter how far she goes, come breeding season, she'll outdo herself pilgrimaging back to you. Cycle of life, eh?"

"Cycle of life." The Doctor agreed wearily.

The hall was bustling once again. Preparations had to be made for the travellers, food, water, gifts for the Domo Barter.

"You really like this female?" Big Barter wondered. His arms were a blur of movement, once again picking, sorting, replacing.

Rose had gone off with Kermk to pack the travelling sacks. Kermk's younger brother, Pg, was also accompanying them to Gymnophiona. He and Rose seemed equally excited.

"Sometimes." The Doctor replied. Now was not one of the times that he envisioned himself and Rose together forever. It was more a time he was ready to put an add in the classifieds for a new companion.

"Gymnophiona is only three days march. Five in bad times. She will be back before you realise she's gone." Big Barter said kindly.

The Doctor nodded. He excused himself, and trudged back down the main hall to Kermk's room. Rose was there, and he ignored her, instead going straight to the bed. The preparations continued around him.

It was midafternoon before everything was ready. The traders, with the TARDIS in tow, had left six hours earlier.

"Doctor."

Rose leant over his still form. He hadn't moved since climbing onto the bed an hour earlier.

"We're going now." she said.

The Doctor's breathing was steady, and slow. His skin was cool to touch, even in the room's sticky warmth. At last, he was resting. Rose smiled.

"See you in few days, then." She said softly.

She ran her hand through his messy hair, scooped her travelling bag from the floor, and left. Kermk and Pg were already waiting for her outside. Their packs were loaded with water bladders, flint and bone knives, and food wrapped in moth wings. A sleeping skin was rolled on top of each pack.

Rose stepped out into the sunlight with a broad grin on her face. This was her first real adventure without the Doctor, and she could barely contain her excitement.

When the three of them, Kermk, Pg and Rose, strode off along the lake shore, none of them looked back.

None of them saw the solitary dark figure standing at the cave mouth.

_xxx xxx_

_Good? No good?_

_Dust?_

_Next chapter; ALONE._


	10. Alone

_**A/N: **This chapter is terrible, but it's quite short.  
Actually, I think it raises more questions than it answers, but they'll all be solved in the next chapter. _

_DId I mention that I don't own Doctor Who, or did everyone just assume that? I thought so.  
Enjoy the confusion. _

xxx xxx

"Rrose."

Rose paused at the sound. Was it her name, or just a frog croaking? She turned.

A few yards behind her, Kermk and Pg had stopped. They stared at her, big down-turned smiles on their poke-marked faces.

"What?" Rose demanded.

It was late afternoon, five or six o' clock. Behind them, back in the direction of Ilium Neocort, the sun settled into an ocean of yellow sky. A few feathery cirrus clouds drifted above the mountains.

"Nik vig." Kermk rumbled. He pointed to the ground.

For hours, the Rax brothers had been making a gallant yet vain attempt to be understood by Rose. They seemed to possess the extremely misguided, but all-too-common belief that if they spoke loudly and repeated themselves, she would eventually get it.

"What?" Rose repeated. She looked at the ground. There was nothing especially spectacular about it; it was just the same craggy black rock as the rest of the mountain side, "So what?"

What she really would have like to see was some flat ground. The constant downwards slope of the land made her feel as though she was the one on the angle, or like her brain was gradually being plastered against the front of her skull.

"Nik vig." Kermk croaked.

He squatted on the ground, his sagging belly like a half-full water canteen bloated out over his thighs. Pg crouched down beside him, shrugging out of his travel pack as he did so. Both Rax looked up at her expectantly.

"You want to stop here?" Rose wondered. She followed Kermk's motion of pointing to the ground.

The older Rax brother nodded vigorously. "Vig." He croaked.

"Why?" Rose saw no reason for them to stop. There was at least an hour of day light left. The way she saw it, the more distance they covered each day, the more chance they had of catching up with the traders.

Pg and Kermk exchanged a glance. With the Rax version of a dopey smile, Pg gestured towards the retreating sun, and covered his eyes with his hand. He waved his free hand, as if trying to erase the sun from the sky.

Rose stared at him, baffled. Were they afraid of the sun? Not for the first time since they'd left the colony, Rose wished the Doctor was there to translate. She wondered dimly how he was doing.

"I don't understand." She said, palms up in a helpless gesture, "Why don't we keep moving?"

Kermk's tongue across his thick lips. He rose silently to his feet, and moved closer to her. "Nik vig." He croaked softly. With one hand on her shoulder, Kermk forced Rose to sit.

The power of his thick arms was immense. Muscle coiled like entwined pythons, flexing beneath his baggy skin.

"Okay, okay. We'll stop." Rose got the point. She wasn't going to argue with an alien that could squeeze her 'til she burst.

Kermk flashed her a quick smile, and hurried off to make camp. They had passed the snow line half an hour earlier, and the ground was soft in places. The older Rax first dug a hole in this soft earth, using only his hands. A foot below the surface, he struck the permafrost, that part of the ground that is always frozen, no matter the time of year.

"Good to travel with a female, eh?" Pg grinned at Kermk.

"It's strange," the older Rax replied, widening the hole, "She smells nice, although she is very ugly. Such small hands, eh?"

Pg chuckled. It was a deep, throaty sound, very similar to an evening frog call. Rose had heard it often enough now to distinguish it from conversation, and she glanced suspiciously over at the Rax brothers. Nine times out of ten, they appeared to be laughing at her.

"And smooth skin," Pg rolled his dark watery eyes, "Very ugly. But what a female, eh? Pity there's not more like her around at wet season."

"I see why the Curator didn't want to let her go." Kermk agreed. After much debating about the translation of the Doctor's title, the brothers had come to the agreement that it meant 'curator'. In any Raxacoricotallapatorius society, this was one of the most highly regarded professions, so the translation was adequate.

The hole was finally completed. Rose regarded the camp site gloomily. There was no shelter, only barren rocks, and odd clumps of long, dead grass. They were on the rough, unforgiving part of the land where the melting mountain slopes met the tundra before giving way to the steppes, still miles above the tree line.

"Get that fire going, Pg. Your female looks cold." Kermk laughed. He looked over at Rose, who glared back at him.

"She's smiling. She's always smiling." Pg commented, glancing up at her, "It's nice to see a female who smiles so much. I think Domo Barter will want to buy this one, even without the male."

Rose glared at Kermk a moment longer, than shook her head. What were those morons talking about now?

"I don't know." The older Rax wrenched a clump of dried grass from between a crack in the rocks, and tossed it into the fire pit. "She seems very attached to the Curator. I think that maybe she wouldn't want to be traded without him."

Pg grinned. "I don't think she has much choice. If Domo Barter wants to trade for her, it doesn't matter what she wants. I know what Big Barter said, about us not trading her at all, but I think he really just wants us to get the best deal. You know?"

"Maybe." Kermk gave a non-committal eye-roll, "Or maybe you should just keep you mouth shut, eh? How about that? Eh? Shut up and start the fire."

The brothers were quiet for a while. After a few minutes, flames licked up out of the fire pit, and Rose shuffled over. Kermk hurried off to search for any dry vegetation they could use to keep the fire burning, and Rose was left with Pg grinning at her inanely.

"Hi," he rolled his eyes in an amicable sort of way, "How's the trip been for you so far?"

Rose stared at him blankly. A minute later, when he still hadn't quit grinning at her, she frowned.

"You like me, don't you?" Pg smiled, "That's okay. I understand. And don't worry, I won't tell your male."

"Why can't you two just get it through your thick heads that I don't understand a word you say?" Rose huffed, "Not a single word. Alright?"

Pg leant back, contented. Life was good when he could attract roaming females of a different species. Huhn. All the girls would be after him come wet season, to be sure.

"Pg, you fat head!" Kermk yelled. He trundled back into camp carrying an armload of short, twisted branches, "Get off your lazy coccygeal gland and make the beds! Cook the dinner! Heat the stones! There's work to be done, you know!"

"Yeah, yeah. Keep your claws on." Pg licked his lips, "I'm getting to it."

"You can start by showing Rose how to make the beds. I tell you what, Pg, if I see you sitting around and gazing at trade items again, I'm going to throw you into the fire. Got it?"

"I got it!" the younger Rax exclaimed, "I'll do everything, okay? Relax, brother."

"I'll give you relax." Kermk grumbled, but he dropped the subject.

Once again, the camp was quiet. Pg placed his three-digit hands over Rose's muddy human ones, and very patiently showed her how to unroll and make the beds. The beds were simple, just layered rectangles of pliable skin, but they were warm, and light.

Rose had the unwelcome thought that it was sort of like being snuggled by a Sycorax. Ew.

"Hey, Kermk." Pg, Rax Casanova, said once the beds were made, and the fire was ready for cooking over.

The older Rax looked up from his travel pack. "What?"

"Do you uh, do you," he glanced at Rose, "Do you think she finds us attractive?"

xxx

The Doctor stumbled. He'd been walking for hours. Four hours. No, six hours. Ten hours. A long time, anyway. The stars spread out like spilled sugar across the midnight sky. The wind was chilly, and blew right through him. Cold, very cold.

He'd have to mention that to someone. Turn the air conditioning down, it's turning people into ice blocks. And these steps…!

"Cripes," he muttered, stumbling again. Whoever put all those steps there was damn inconsiderate. The Doctor had been walking down them for hours.

But he knew it wasn't much further. He'd heard voices before. The room must be close now.

To be honest, he didn't care much for the décor. Too many mountains, not enough walls. Not a sign or a information desk in sight.

"Christ!"

His foot slipped, and he toppled forwards, rolling head over heels down the stairs. So many stairs. His head hit the ground, but still he kept falling. He couldn't see now, couldn't hear his own screams.

At last, bruised and aching, he came to a stop. When his vision returned, he glanced around. Was this the hallway?

The Doctor staggered to his feet. His mouth tasted of blood.

"Hello?" he called, lurching forward.

There it was. There was the door.

He was making his way towards it, when a sharp, sudden pain gripped his chest. Oh no. Not when he was so close. The door was only feet away.

"Please." He said, voice soft and pleading. He just had to make it inside that door.

He reached out, and his hand groped empty air. The Doctor stared numbly at the scene in front of him. Then he collapsed.

A long time later, he thought he heard someone call his name. But he couldn't be sure.

xxx

He was walking through a field of white. Snow, perfect and untouched, draped the ground. In some places it was more than a foot deep. The sky was clear from horizon to horizon, and as pale as a shadow on ice.

Rising far over his head, in start contrast to the muted land and sky, were jagged black towers of rock. The sheer sides of the rock spires glistened like polished onyx.

"Why would anyone want to keep this a secret?" he wondered aloud.

He knew he didn't have long there. It would be half an hour at the longest before he was discovered. They monitored these things, they would know. So he had to hurry.

At the opposite end of the field, he found what he was looking for. A curve of bone, most likely a rib, rose nine foot out of the snow. The bone was as hard and white as diamond, but crusted with cartilage.

"_Gymnophiona Ichthyophiidae Fossorius-Draconis_." He sighed, looking wistfully at the rib, "So it is true."

Sixty feet away, another smaller rib was visible. It was true, then. Nothing could survive on Beta. Not even the desert worm.

The air above him wavered. He regarded it warily.

It was time to go.

xxx

"Rose?"

The Doctor yawned, and rubbed his eyes. Nothing like a good night's sleep to refresh a man. Or a time lord.

"Doctor?"

Rose's voice was shrill and panicked. It warbled strangely, maybe like she was running. The Doctor opened his eyes to a scene of utter chaos. He was in the middle of a small clearing, a fire pit smouldered a few yards away. Dense forest pressed in on every side, turning a dark night even darker.

"Stay down!" Rose screamed. She wasn't the only one running; the two Rax, Kermk and Pg, were scrambling blindly around the clearing, wielding fallen branches.

"How long was I asleep for?" the Doctor wondered to himself. The last thing he remembered clearly was running down the mountain side, searching for Rose. And then dreams, strange dreams.

"There!"

Rose screamed again. She thrust a finger at an apparent random spot in the forest. Kermk and Pg slid to a halt, their heads following the path of her finger.

"Problems?" the Doctor asked, getting to his feet. He stretched, keeping his attitude casual. He didn't want to spoil his good mood by acting all panicked and terrified.

"Yes, problems!" Rose cried, "You picked a bloody inconvenient time to wake up! Look!"

The Doctor looked.

Crashing through the forest, its head rising above the trees like a shark fin slicing through the ocean's surface, a huge, limbless dragon twisted towards them.

"Oh, I see." The Doctor grinned, "Problem."

xxx xxx

_See? I told you it was terrible. _ _ I really just want to get the plot moving forward, and this is the best way to do it._

_By the way, thank you to everyone who reviewed. I love you all!  
I love you even if you don't review, but not as much. Tee hee._

_Next Chapter; Uhm. Haven't named it yet. Oh well._


	11. Worms

_**A/N:** Only this chapter to go before things really heat up! Yay! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and also everyone who keeps reading this. You're mad, of course, but I adore you all the same. Um. This chap is a bit gory. But just a bit._

xxx xxx

"Get ready!"

It was Kermk who shouted. The Doctor glanced sideways at the Rax. In one hand he brandished a long branch, in the other, his stone club. Now the danger had been sighted, he was very calm and still.

"You're not going to hit it with that, are you?" the Doctor wondered, taking a few steps to the left.

Kermk had no chance to reply. The dragon's huge head crashed through the trees. Its body arched up, and the head slammed down, hook nose first, to the spot the Doctor had been a moment before.

"Now!" Kermk bellowed. He and Pg rushed in towards the snarling worm, clubs and branches held high.

"Don't! Stop!"

The Doctor lunged forward. Outside the clearing, trees snapped as the dragon's limbless body jerked, in a frantic attempt to raise its head again. It screamed at the Rax as they approached.

"You know what these things are?" Kermk demanded, swinging the branch at the dragon's head, "You know what it'll do to us?"

As cheerfully as he could manage, the Doctor said, "It's a desert worm. Burrows underground, lives in artesian basins, water bores, that sort of thing. Only comes to the surface to eat."

The entire time he spoke, Kermk and Pg never let up in their barrage on the worm's head. The Doctor grabbed the older Rax's arm, dug his fingers into the soft flesh until he hit hard muscle. Kermk stopped.

"I also know," he continued, with Kermk staring at him, "That to dig underground with no hands, you need a very hard head. Hitting it with sticks won't do you any good."

"You saying that there is no defence? You're saying we should let it eat us?" Kermk scowled.

"I'm saying you're doing the wrong thing. Give me the stick."

At long last, the worm found its legs, so to speak. One by one, the massive coils of its smooth body pulled back. The head was last. In the fire light, the worm's body was rosy, naked pink, giving it an almost earthworm appearance. Its head was wedge-shaped, so all the driving force from that huge body and heavy skull narrowed into the sharp point of nose.

"Don't wrestle with it, either." The Doctor warned, easing the branch from Kermk's hand.

He crossed the clearing, to the fire. The branch was splintered at the end and sparks flared up its length instantly when he dipped it into the ashes.

"There he goes, come to save the day." Rose muttered. She stood well away from the squirming worm, knowing full well the devastating power of its axe head.

She watched the Doctor lunge for the worm, flaming branch held high. The worm squealed at him, and drove its head down again. The Doctor leapt back. His movements were fluid and precise, with no sign of the binding ache that had been harassing him for days.

"This is how you do it!" he shouted, driving the flaming branch down across the worm's exposed neck.

The worm screamed. Its long body flailed, twisting desperately to heft its bulk up. The Doctor pressed the branch down harder, until the air was acrid with the odour of burning flesh.

"The knife, now!" Kermk roared.

Pg scuttled back to camp. He returned, moments later, with a long-bladed flint knife in hand. Kermk snatched it from him, not daring to take his eyes from the writhing worm for a second.

With one deft slash, the older Rax split the worm open from neck to belly. It screamed again, twitching sporadically, spilling purplish innards to the clearing floor. Rose turned away from the scene. She held a hand over her nose and mouth to block the smell, not only the searing flesh, but the sweet, putrid scent of too much blood. Her ears rang with the worm's shrill screaming.

A minute later, it was over. The worm was just a carcass, a colossal reminder of the violence not long passed.

"You do that often?" Kermk wondered, grinning at the Doctor.

"Too often. If you only knew." the time lord shook his head. He stared at the carcass at his feet. Even dead, even with its intestines slipping out its side, the worm was as thick as he was tall. At the torso, it was twice his size.

Although he knew it had to be done, he couldn't help feel bitter. He shouldn't have had to do it. Not here. Not any more.

"Well," Rose piped from across the clearing, "That's it for me. You're looking refreshed, Doctor. You can take the first shift."

There were other sleeping skins spread out around the fire. With a sideways glance at the Doctor, Rose moved her skin away from the others.

"Wait, Rose." The Doctor moved towards her, "Tell me what's been going on, first. Where are we? How long was I asleep for?"

Rose yawned. "Kermk and Pg can fill you in better than me. I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day if we're going to reach Gymnophiona."

"Let her sleep, eh?" Kermk nudged the Doctor, "She's been working hard. All my life, I never met a female who worked so hard. So if you want to know what's going on, I'll take first shift with you. I'll tell you."

"Sure." The Doctor replied in Raxin, "Thank you."

"Hey, Curator. It's good to see you awake again. It's been very quiet without you." Pg grinned. To Kermk, he said, "Wake me up for the second shift."

"What do you want to know first?"

The older Rax didn't voice his question until he was sure Pg and Rose were asleep. He and the Doctor kept their backs to the fire pit, their eyes on the murky forest. Pg's gentle snores, and the crackle of flames were the only sound.

There was a long pause before the Doctor replied. He was almost embarrassed to break the silence. "I was supposed to stay at Ilium Neocort, wasn't I? Why am I here?"

Kermk chuckled. "My guess is that you missed your female. You must have followed us down the mountain." He grinned broadly, "Big Barter was right, my friend, you should have stayed. We found you on the steppes in the morning. I think you ran right passed us in the night, and not noticed. Pg and I thought you were dead."

The Doctor didn't say anything. He faintly recalled running down a long flight of stairs, searching for something. What he had been looking for, he didn't remember. Not Rose, for sure.

"You did look dead, eh? Very still, no breathing, nothing. At first Pg held Rose back while I checked if you really were dead. Rose was very upset, you know. Making lots of noise, fighting Pg and me. In the end I told Pg to let her go." Kermk rolled his eyes, and nudged the Doctor. "We told her you were dead, eh, that you were no good for trading or mating any more. She doesn't Rax, though. She wouldn't let us leave unless we took you with us."

"Lucky me." The Doctor remarked, his ears burning. He was really beginning to wish they'd never come to Beta. They would have encountered less opposition on the Death Star.

"Yeah, lucky you. You're lucky this wasn't the other way round, eh? I had to carry you. I don't think you could carry me all this way. Hey?" Kermk laughed. "I don't think so."

"How many days since we left Ilium Neocort?" the Doctor wondered.

He was staring at his own blood-stained shirt. Most of it was old, brown and stiff. The rest must have splashed up on him when Kermk sliced the worm open. His pinstripe jacket was missing, though there was a bandaged around the sleeping Pg's upper arm which looked suspiciously familiar.

"This is the forth night. We should have been there by now." The older Rax sighed, "It has not been an auspicious trip. We were slowed down, by you, by Rose. I've been this way a lot, you know. I made sure we took all the shortcuts, stayed close to the river."

"I suppose we're still behind the traders." The Doctor said.

Kermk's eyes bulged. Something was bugging him. "They've got to be in Gymnophiona by now. I was so stupid, you know? We left the Monsura River this morning, to cut across the forest. Tonight, we should be on the banks of the Apoda. Instead, we're in the middle of nowhere. All because I was so stupid."

He shook his craggy head. He glanced over his shoulder, to Pg. The Doctor followed his gaze.

"Is that my jacket?" he wondered.

"Eh? Yeah. I don't know why you wear all those skins anyway. It's not that cold." Kermk licked his lips, "Me and my shortcuts. We should have gone the long way. But you know, I'm thinking only of females. There's females in Gymnophiona all year round. I can't stop thinking about them. This morning, I was thinking so much about females that I lead us right across a worm nest."

"Women'll do that to you." The Doctor said sympathetically. There had been more than one occasion where he'd risked himself and others to save a pretty girl. Even Rose had been shown her fair share of chivalry.

"Next thing I know, those damn worms have us surrounded. I was carrying you, so I couldn't fight them off. I told Pg to pick up Rose, and run." Kermk sighed again, "I thought we'd gotten away. I couldn't see any worms. And then, Pg started screaming. I turn around, and there's a worm right next to him, and Rose is on the ground. The worm had Pg's arm in its mouth, chopped right off his shoulder."

Kermk shuddered at the memory. His arms were crossed, and his clammy palms constantly traced the warty ridges of his biceps. Checking they were still attached.

"I dropped you," Kermk smiled suddenly, "And I fought the worm off with my bare hands. Lucky me it was only a small one. I snapped its neck, you know, like you do with Sycorax."

Yeah, right.

Kermk wasn't deterred by the Doctor's lack of agreement. "Your Rose, she saved the day. Pg was loosing a lot of blood, I though he would keel over right there, and we'd have to drag his carcass back to Ilium Neocort. But your Rose, she went over to you, and she took your jacket. There was this little, uh,"

"Object about this long?" The Doctor suggested helpfully, holding his fingers about ten inches apart, "Silver? Had a blue light at one end?"

"That's it. She held Pg's arm back near his shoulder, and turned that blue light on. After a minute, the bleeding stopped, and when I looked again, his arm was back on. Like it had never been chopped off, yeah? Strange. Your Rose tied the jacket around it, but I don't know why. It looked fine to me."

"It's better to be safe." The Doctor said. So Rose was doing surgery on aliens now. Kermk and Pg mustn't have been all that bad, if Rose liked them.

Kermk chuckled. "And here you are too, eh? The only ones dead are those abominable desert worms."

"Better them than us." The Doctor agreed.

There wasn't much more to be said. After a long silence, the Doctor moved away from Kermk, to sit beside Rose. He reached for her hand, curled up near her face. When he was still, the silence of the forest flooded back into the clearing.

_Better them than us_. The Doctor had said. He wondered if he believed it.

xxx

"There!"

Pg's voice held none of the terror of the night before. He bounded over the sand dunes, shouting and pointing at something in the far distance.

"Where?" Kermk called.

The older Rax climbed awkwardly up a dune, hurrying to catch up with his brother.

"What's going on?" Rose frowned at the Doctor.

It was late afternoon, the fifth day after the journey from Ilium Neocort. Since mid-morning, the travellers had been trudging through golden sand dunes, following the banks of the writhing Apoda River. Aside from the deep wells bored either side of the river, there was no sign of civilisation.

"I think he's spotted Gymnophiona." The Doctor told her.

His shirt sleeves were brown from constantly being rolled up above his elbows. Sweat drenched his back, and stuck his hair up in a wave of small spikes. He'd long ago removed his tie, and undone the top few buttons of his shirt.

Rose was sweating just as much. The temperature difference between the mountains and the desert was enormous. Even the low-lying forest had been cooler than this. She had rolled her pants legs up, and wore nothing over her thin black undershirt. Her layers of winter clothes had been stuffed into her travel pack, and the only reason she kept her snow boots was the searing heat of the sand.

"What?" Rose shrieked, "Finally!"

She took off after Kermk and Pg. The Rax had their own way of dealing with the heat, which was to take frequent dips in the cool river water. Though now that they were approaching Gymnophiona, it was dangerous to approach the river. Desert worms were rife through this part of the land.

"Where is it?" she demanded of Kermk, in fractured Raxin.

"Look!" Kermk cried gleefully, pointing to a dark smudge on the horizon.

Beside him, Pg was performing a victorious belly dance. Rose was quick to look away from the jingling rolls of pallid fat. She'd never appreciated the Doctor's lean frame as much as she had since meeting the Rax.

"We're almost there!" Rose exclaimed, "Doctor! We're almost there!"

At long last, the Doctor reached the top of the sand dune. He squinted at the smudge proclaimed Gymnophiona. The horizon shimmered in the afternoon heat, distorting the distance to the Rax colony.

"Not far now." He grinned. He was more glad that Rose was speaking to him again than to see Gymnophiona close. "Just a few more miles."

Even grouchy Kermk seemed invigorated by the sight of the colony. "Hey, standing here and gaping won't take us any closer, eh? Get on with it!"

Rose didn't understand the words, but she understood the sentiment. Smiling at the Doctor beside her, she set off towards the colony.

If only she knew what waited for them there, she might not have been so eager.

xxx xxx

_Dum de dum. Next chap up soon._

_Gymnophiona at last!_


	12. Gymnophiona

_**A/N: **My boyfriend is driving me insane. It's his fault if this is bad ;P_

_I really just want to get onto the trading bit, and whatnot, but I've hardly had any time to type lately._

_Thanks for the reviews!_

xxx xxx

They reached the colony at dusk.

The sunset at their backs was a brilliant, fiery saffron, the distant mountains a smouldering vermillion. In the five evenings of their journey, the sky had never been anything less than spectacular.

"Curator, wait. I need to talk to you for a moment."

The Doctor paused, and turned back to look at Kermk. Rose's hand curled around his. She gave him a puzzled look.

"Is something the matter? Can't we just go in already?" she wondered.

"I don't know." The Doctor shrugged, "Kermk has something to say, first."

The big Rax shifted uncomfortably, his eyes lolling in his head. "It's just. Well. They um. Domo Barter might want to buy you, you know? Maybe not both of you, though. And maybe neither. Pg and me, we will try to bargain so he buys one of you, or neither. Eh? I don't know what you will do if he just buys one of you, or makes you slaves, or something. He will probably try, anyway. We are not good traders like Domo Barter, so we uh-"

"What he trying to say," Pg cut in, forcibly shoving Kermk aside, "Is that we will so our best for you. But we make no promises, okay?"

Reluctantly, the Doctor translated for Rose. She nodded, like it was no great surprise. At that moment, Rose didn't care whether they were traded or not traded or made slaves or space monkeys or whatever else. She was exhausted. All she wanted to do was sleep.

"Is that all?" the Doctor asked Kermk.

"I think so. Wish us luck, eh?" the older Rax grinned anxiously. "We have to make the first presentation tonight. It won't take long. Afterwards, we can eat, sleep, have a bath. Get ready for tomorrow's trading."

"Typical Raxacoricotallapatorian approach," the Doctor said to Rose, as they followed Kermk into the colony, "Domo Barter wants to see us at our worst. Not even Pg and Kermk get a chance to freshen up first."

"As long as they hurry up." Rose yawned.

Despite being the largest Rax colony on Beta, Gymnophiona was little more than primitive camp. It constituted of fifteen dome tents, low lying structures made from wooden struts and skins. Grey wisps of steam rose from the tepee-like top of most, sign of the steam-pits inside.

The tents were arranged neatly, in rows of four and five. They huddled around the central unit, a bulky, shimmering-skinned tent twice the size of any other.

"Guess which one belongs to the chief." The Doctor grinned.

"That one." Rose said, at the same time as Pg whispered,

"The big one!"

Girl and Rax stared at each other. Even Kermk, as preoccupied as he was, glanced back at them.

"Since when did you speak Rax?" Pg demanded at long last. He regarded Rose with a mixture of suspicion and hurt, sorely offended that she hadn't spoken to him sooner.

"I don't." Rose told him curtly, "It means the TARDIS is nearby. It translates for us."

"Hey, this is good. Domo Barter will like it if you can speak." Kermk enthused. He grinned madly at the Doctor and Rose.

"Alright, let's not keep him waiting." The Doctor said, ushering the Rax towards the central tent.

Rose trailed behind him, frowning slightly. She glanced around for any sign of the TARDIS, but found none. The idiot Rax must have stored it in a tent somewhere.

Gymnophiona was deathly silent. It had taken Rose two days before she realised why they made camp so early; Rax eyes were huge, but they relied on movement and alternating blocks of light to see. At night, and on cloudy days, their vision was severely impeded. Even the yellow light of dusk left them almost blind, and so the Rax judged their actions based on scent whenever possible.

Kermk halted when he reached Domo Barter's tent. He blinked a few times, before clearing his throat and announcing, "Weary travellers seeking to make their trade presentations."

Silence. Kermk licked his lips, and turned back to look helplessly at the others.

"Eh, hello?" he tried.

Still nothing.

"Look," Kermk snapped, getting impatient, "I know it's late. But we've been walking all day, okay? We just want to make the presentation and get some sleep."

A moment later, a wrinkled head poked out from the door flap. Watery round eyes stared bleakly up at the travellers.

"Trading is closed for the day: no more presentations until tomorrow. Where are you from, anyway? We're not expecting anyone." The seemingly disembodied head wondered.

"Is that you, Filtbr? You idiot! It's Kermk and Pg, from Ilium Neocort. We found the creatures that own the sky rock, and they want it back. Have you guys got it, or what?" Kermk demanded.

"Kermk?" the head, Filtbr, blinked hazily, "Creatures? Is that what that stink is?"

"Stink!" Rose cried indignantly, "You lot are the worst smelling monsters I've ever come across!"

"Like bad breath." The Doctor agreed.

Filtbr's eyes swivelled in their massive sockets, and came to a rest on Rose. "Is that one? How come it can speak?"

The Doctor sighed. They were going around in circles. "Can we speak to Domo Barter, or are you just going to yap your tongue out of your head all night?" He asked scathingly of Filtbr.

"He's asleep. Like I said, trading is closed for today. But I guess you guys can stay in one of the guest tents, if you want. There should be enough room for everyone." A long arm emerged from the depths of Domo Barter's tent. Whether it belong to Filtbr or not was arguable, "Far left. Get cleaned up, and come back in the morning."

"Right, thanks." Kermk reached down, and jiggled Filtbr's wrinkly forehead with his hand.

When they were out of the Gymnophionan Rax's hearing, he muttered, "Moron."

Rose sniggered. Despite her best efforts to maintain the memory of Slitheen as greedy, gruesome aliens, she couldn't help but like Kermk and his brother. Pg was almost childish with his elusive crush on her, and Kermk was generally good-humoured beneath his gruff exterior. She also couldn't evade the niggling feeling that uncovering Beta's secrets would eventually mean destroying the brothers, for better or worse.

"Hey, worm chops!" Pg cried gleefully, when he stepped into the guest tent.

The tent was large, though the roof was low. Rose was the only one who could stand without stooping. Four skin beds, each propped up off the ground with thick bone stilts, lined the far wall. An empty steam-pit took pride of place in the centre.

"Get that pit up and steaming, brother." Kermk said, "And put some chops on. Eh? No slacking off, okay?"

"Aw, Kermk. Why do I always have to do everything?" Pg whined. He held a fat, purplish chop in either hand. The chops had been half-buried in the sand to preserve.

"Have I not protected you, and taken care of you, and provided all that you need since you were but a tadpole?" Kermk demanded. Pg nodded glumly, and the older Rax grinned. "That is why you must do everything. Respect your elders, eh?"

"But-"

"Hey! I can dream up twice as many chores for you to do, yeah? Get on with it!" Kermk snapped.

Rose shook her head. She sat on one of the skin beds, and drew the Doctor down next to her.

"It's funny," she said, giving him a small smile, "I spent all this time wishing I could understand them, and now that I can, I want privacy."

"What for?" the Doctor wondered.

"Nothin' much. I was just hopin' we could talk. Do you think we could go and look for the TARDIS tonight? Get away from our impending slavery and all that." Rose whispered, glancing at Kermk and Pg to make sure they weren't listening in.

"Probably best to wait until morning." The Doctor told her, though his eyes said otherwise.

Rose interpreted this to mean that they would wait until the Rax were asleep. There was no more need to for a sentry through the night, now they were amongst…people.

"Alright," Rose stretched, and yawned again. "I'm going to get a good night's sleep then. At last."

The Doctor got up off the bed so Rose could lay down. He plonked down on the skin next to hers, and watched the Rax brothers set up the steam pit. First they poured water in from a huge wooden urn. There was a communal fire at the edge of the camp, and Kermk sent Pg out to fetch some heated rocks.

The brothers pitched these rocks into the pit, and instantly the pit water hissed and spat steam. Soon, the air in the tent was thick with vapour. The Doctor began to feel drowsy, and sticky with sweat.

"You want a chop, Curator?" Kermk wondered. His voice seemed to come from a great distance. It echoed strangely, a monster's trumpet in a primordial swamp.

"No, thanks." The Doctor replied.

He rubbed his eyes. It wouldn't do to fall asleep. He kicked off his shoes, with the intention of cooling off. Something cool and damp pressed against his face, and he realised he was laying down.

Pg ducked out of the tent, to fetch more rocks, taking the cooled stones with him. Night glimmered outside for an instant, then the door flap slid shut once more.

"Wake me up when you're asleep." The Doctor muttered to Kermk.

Kermk chuckled. In the back of his mind, he wondered what the Doctor would taste like.

xxx

"Doctor! Wake up!"

"Is that you, Kermk?"

"It's Rose, you prat! Wake up!"

The Doctor stared blearily up at Rose. She was standing over him, one hand gently shaking his shoulder. Her voice was a whisper, muffled further by the humid fog that surrounded them.

With a start, the Doctor sat up. "Rose!" he whispered furiously, "Come on! We've got to go and look for the TARDIS!"

Rose shook her head, dumbfounded. She followed the Doctor as he crossed hastily to the tent's entrance.

Silently, the pair crawled out through the door flap, and into the chilly desert night. A million stars glittered above them, and Rose couldn't help but feel a pang of homesickness. There was never this many stars in London, never.

"Can we stay together?" she wondered, keeping her voice low, "I don't want to run into a space pig alone."

"Not much chance of that. They're all sleeping." The Doctor said, and yawned. He judged the time to be close to nine pm, meaning he'd slept for three hours. Far too long, for a time lord as young as he was. Needing so much sleep was a sign of age.

"Please." Rose's begged.

The Doctor glanced at her, eyebrows raised. "Oh, alright." He said, "I don't know what you're afraid of, though."

They moved clockwise around the tents, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Not that there was much point. The only light was the communal fire, down to smouldering ashes now that no one was tending to it. No sight nor sound stirred in the camp.

"Nothing here." Rose murmured, squinting against the gloom in one tent. She pulled back out, and shrugged at the Doctor.

"Nothing in this one." He mouthed, from the tent beside hers.

They moved on. Not all of the tents contained Rax. Some were empty, or seemed to be entirely devoted to storage. Wood, bones, flint, spare skins and bizarre trinkets were piled up haphazardly. The gaping mouths of deep bore-wells were dotted here and there amongst the tents.

By the twelfth tent, Rose had almost given up. Her nerves were wrought from the constant, semi-imagined peril of being found out. Not that they were really doing anything wrong; the TARDIS was theirs, they had every right to look for it. She wondered if the Rax would see it that way.

"Wish I'd never seen that bloody toboggan." Rose grumbled.

She ducked down, and crab-crawled to the front of one of the remaining unchecked tents. As quietly as she could, Rose lifted the door flap.

"What the…?" she breathed.

For a moment, Rose didn't know what was wrong with the scene. The black worm of fear stirred in her stomach. It wasn't so much the interior of the tent that frightened her, rather its dreadful familiarity.

_It's just a girl_, she told herself, _nothing to be afraid of._

The girl sat with her back to Rose, kneeling over a skin bed. A small flame torch illuminated the bed, and cast long shadows across the tent floor. The air was thick and humid, but the steam pit was still, its heat long since drained. The scratching of a pen on rough paper accompanied the tiny crackling of fire.

As quietly as she had lifted the tent door, Rose drew it back down. She backed away from the tent, as though it contained something far more hideous and terrible than a girl scribbling by fire light, and scrambled to her feet.

"You alright, Rose?"

Rose almost screamed at the touch of a hand on her shoulder. She spun on her heel, and came face to face with the Doctor.

"There's a- a- a- there's a girl in there!" she hissed, "A girl! A h- human girl!"

The Doctor smiled anxiously at her, trying to be patient and polite when he was inwardly thinking she'd gone off the deep end. It was probably the desert heat, playing tricks with her cold-weather accustomed mind.

"But no TARDIS?" he asked, feeling something needed to be said.

"No! At least, I don't think so." Rose frowned, "You don't believe me, do you?"

The Doctor gave her a look which very clearly said what he was thinking. He grinned inanely at her, wondering what would be the best way to knock her out and drag her back to Kermk's tent before she alerted the entire camp to their caper.

"Come and see for yourself, then!" Rose fumed. She grabbed his arm, and turned back towards the tent.

"Okay, okay!" the Doctor whispered furiously, pulling out of her grip, "I'll look. Just keep your voice down!"

Rose heaved a sigh of relief. "Thanks."

She crouched once again, moving on all fours towards the tent. There was no sound from within, and for a moment Rose wondered if she really had imagined it.

"Only one way to find out." She told herself.

Deftly, she drew the door flap back. Her breath caught in her throat.

"You can stand up now."

The words bypassed her brain and shot straight to her spine. Rose felt herself stand, awkwardly, like a puppet on strings. There was a rustle of stiff cloth as the Doctor stood up behind her.

"I take it you are the owners of the machine."

Silhouetted by the torch light, seeming huge against the narrow tent opening, the girl stood. Her voice dripped with authority and high breeding, and Rose felt a great resentment building inside her. Already, she wished that she had stood on her will, and not that of the girl.

"No."

The response was softly spoken. Even the Doctor wasn't sure of what he responded to, the girl's statement, or the reality of the girl herself. His mind reeled, lost to a sensation of zero gravity. He had to glance down at the sandy ground to make sure it hadn't dropped out from beneath him.

"I thought I was the last." The girl said, staring at him, "All this time."

The Doctor stared back at her. His expression of despairing fear hardened to defiance, and his eyes burned black with rage.

"You demon," he spat, "You devil. Whatever you are, figment of my imagination or malevolent shape shifter, leave me be. Stop this torment." His voice rose in pitch and ferocity, and it was vehemence he roared, "Get out of my head, monster!"

The girl stepped back, then checked herself, and squared her shoulders. She wasn't so easily deterred.

"It's you that taunts me!" she cried, voice hot, "I have not survived for so long to be mocked by ghosts. You will leave, now, or I will strike you down where you stand."

"Can I say something?" Rose piped, feeling somewhat left out. Both the Doctor and the girl turned to glare at her. "I can see both of you, and I'm _not_ mad, which is more than I can say for you two. We all exist, alright? No one's taunting anyone."

"It's impossible." The Doctor said, his eyes on the girl once again, "There's no way. I was the only survivor. Everyone else is dead."

"Apparently not." The girl shrugged.

She looked ready to say more, but at that moment, a burly Rax lumbered around the side of the tent.

"Odjya!" the Rax exclaimed, blinking madly, "What's all this commotion? What's this stink? Are you alright?"

"Great. Now we're noisy _and _smelly." Rose said under her breath.

"I'm fine. There's some creatures here, they appear to be trade items." The girl replied, stepping out of the tent, "They must have come outside for a drink, and gotten turned around."

"Hey, that's a relief. I though you were being attacked by a desert worm." The Rax chuckled. "You know who the creatures belong to? I'll take them back for you."

"We belong to Kermk and Pg." Rose said hurriedly, before the Doctor could say anything.

"They can talk." The Rax, who Rose guessed was a guard, remarked, "That makes things easier, huh?"

"I suppose so. Tell me, are you two to be traded in the morning?" The girl wondered, turning back to Rose and the Doctor.

"Yeah." Rose said, once again cutting in before her companion could reply.

The Rax guard was moving off in the direction of Kermk's tent, and Rose spoke as she trailed behind.

Watching from the tent, the girl flashed her a small smile, and said, "I'll see you there, then. I might even trade for you."

Oh, boy.

xxx

That night, the Doctor dreamed.

He had just descended a long flight of stairs, and his neck prickled with sweat and fear. He kept close to the wall, and his eyes flickered constantly between the stairs, and the door that was his goal.

His jacket brushed against the wall and he crept closer to the door. He thought the sound of it might drive him mad. But he pressed on, closing the distance quickly.

_Professor O. Panthea._

The Doctor procrastinated, reading the name printed on the door slowly. His hand moved of its own volition, sliding down the door frame, until he gripped the handle in his clammy palm.

The hall was empty. There was still time to turn back.

No, there was no time to turn back. In the hasty motion of one doing something extremely distasteful, the Doctor wrenched the door open.

He slipped inside, pulling the door closed behind him. The room was devoid of life. Décor was conservative, professional. There was a desk in the centre of the room, a high-backed chair behind it. Papers were piled neatly on the desk, and a small artificial pot-plant huddled in one dark corner of the room.

He didn't care much for the décor.

"Now or never, I suppose." The Doctor told himself.

He made his way to the desk, footsteps careful, quiet. There were four drawers, two on either side. All bar one was locked.

The Doctor dismissed the unlocked immediately. He turned his attention to the others, sonic screw driver in hand.

He was on the verge of opening the first locked drawer, when his head snapped up abruptly. Footsteps echoed on the stairs outside.

"Please." The Doctor said softly, "Just a little more time."

There was no more time. The door swung open.

xxx xxx

_Meh._

_Actually, I like the last bit._

_Next chapter; the Time Lady_


	13. The Time Lady

_**A/N: **Finally! The trade! Yay!_

_I just want to say that I'm not going to try and make you like the time lady. I don't want anyone to like her. In my POV, the only person the Doctor should ever get with is Rose, and that's final. And also, Rose should never get with Pg. Lol._

xxx xxx

The door swung open.

"Curator!"

The Doctor awoke with a start.

Kermk's planetary body loomed over him, his great frog eyes blinking against the gloom. Morning light strained through the tent, filtered to a fleshy pink by the skins.

"Sorry to wake you, eh? But you got to get up. Today is a big day." Kermk grinned, and stifled a yawn, "We all got to be looking our best for Domo Barter."

"Oh, I must be dreaming." The Doctor said wistfully, "Are you talking about what I think you're talking about?"

Kermk scratched his warty head, "You are a strange creature. How am I s'pose to know what you're thinking about, eh? All I mean is, we're all going to take a bath, scrub up real good for the trade. We just got to hurry before everyone else gets down there."

"I never thought I'd say this to a space pig," the Doctor said, climbing off the skin bed as he spoke, "But I love you, Kermk."

"Yeah, yeah. Maybe I will love you back once you don't stink so bad." Kermk chuckled.

He led the way out of the tent, and through the rest of the camp to the river. At this stage in its meandering journey, the raging Apoda had slowed and divided, branches of smaller rivers fanning out from the central body like the rearing heads of a hydra.

Between these wide rivulets the ground was dark with waterlog. The streams and brooks themselves were coloured rusty orange from the soft clay beneath the sand, and incredibly saline. Fat Rax had no trouble staying afloat on the salty waters.

"This the watering hole, then?" the Doctor wondered, staring eagerly at the nearest rivulet.

Two Rax, both big female guards, were positioned on the steep stream bank. The watched the water warily, eyes peeled for any sign of the dreaded desert worms. Several other Rax splashed about in the murky stream.

"This is the one. Your Rose has already washed herself. She didn't want to wake you, you know." Kermk grinned. His eyes never left the largest Rax guard. It must be love.

"Where is she now?" the Doctor wondered, glancing around for any sight of his companion.

"Hey, don't sound so worried. Pg just took her to get something to eat. Okay? We'll meet up with them at the start of trade." Kermk licked his lips, his eyes set firmly on the Rax guard's sizeable behind, "Don't mope around, anyway. Go wash off."

The Doctor slipped his shirt off over his head, and kicked off his shoes, before venturing into the water. It was early morning, around six thirty, and already the stream was warm. In the distance, the desert sands smouldered. Two more hours, and the heat would be oppressive.

"What is _that_?" one of the swimming Rax asked of another, pointing shamelessly at the Doctor.

"Time lord." he cut in, before the space pigs could speculate further, "Nothing to be afraid of."

The Rax sniggered. He couldn't blame them, to be honest. Even though most of them were only a foot or so taller than him, they outweighed him by 300 pounds. They weren't exactly creatures he wanted to mud-wrestle with.

"Do you have a name, time lord?"

A voice from the bank took the Doctor by surprise. Waist high in orange water, he turned to see the girl. She was short and lean, her figure almost boyish, and she really seemed little more than a girl. Her face destroyed that image. Her face was hard and cruel, as cold as the notes of her voice. It was the face of a predator, and it chilled the Doctor to the bone.

"What are you doing here?" he narrowed his eyes, careful not to betray his fear, "Why didn't you die like all the others?"

The girl laughed, a harsh bray of sound. Simply, she said, "I ran."

"You ran? Away from the war?" the Doctor wondered, eyebrow raised. None of the time lords had run. None had been allowed to.

"It was a stupid war." The girl retorted.

She seemed content not to say anymore, but just to watch him. Her eyes were an odd amber colour, not entirely pleasant, and they bored into him like they could bypass the physical and skip straight to the soul.

"Why don't they see you for what you are?" the Doctor queried, glancing at the nearby Rax. They were all listening intently, though none appeared to realise what was being said.

"Ultra-violet light projection." The girl said. "They don't see the way we do. Vision based on light and motion, you know the deal. U-V projection simply confuses their eyes, and their brains believe I'm just another Rax."

"We're not in range of the TARDIS here, I presume." The Doctor said. It was strange to know that was switching between languages without so much as noticing. English, Rax, and now Gallifryan.

"No."

And that was it. End of conversation. After a while, when the Doctor was satisfied that he was clean, he climbed out of the stream. The girl watched him keenly, her stare never lessening in intensity.

"Not many people knew the co-ordinates to Beta." He said as he pulled his shirt back on. He didn't bother to look at the girl. He knew she would be listening.

"No."

"But you do."

"Indeed."

Kermk watched this exchange with mild interest. The female Rax guards had been exchanged with males, and now his priorities were shifting back to the morning's trade. Of course, the shimmering Rax girl on the bank was receiving her due amount of attention.

"Hey, Curator," Kermk said, in the lazy, self-satisfied fashion that females found attractive, "You found a pretty female that speaks your language, eh? How's your luck!"

"Bad." The Doctor replied flatly, "Very bad. Don't we have trading to do?"

"Your lose, eh?" the Rax chortled.

"Not really."

Kermk stared ponderously at the girl for a moment. He shot the Doctor a sideways glance, and a big, down-turned grinned crept across his face.

"Curator, why don't you run along to trade? Domo Barter's tent, you know the one. I just want to ah, discuss a few things with your female." He said, doing his best to sound amicable.

The Doctor glanced at the girl. Was she real? Or was she just a dream?

He found himself suddenly longing for Rose, for her hand around his. He wanted to touch her, face and lips and hair, wanted to hear her voice and breath her perfume. With the TARDIS gone indefinitely, Rose was the only thing he could be sure of. Good old earth shop-assistant Rose.

"I'll see you there." He agreed, and turned back towards the camp.

The girl stared after him, filled with a hunger and longing she couldn't express. Like all members of her race, with the one notable exception, she feared and hated change. Her first impression was to strike the Doctor down, before he did the same to her.

"Later." She consoled herself, "When we're alone."

Eavesdropping, Kermk said, "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"Just thinking aloud." The girl smiled pleasantly, "What was it that you wanted to discuss?"

xxx

Domo Barter's tent was a hive of activity. Rax bustled about, with arms full of tradeable goods, each vying for a optimal position close to the chief.

The Doctor spotted Rose and Pg in a corner, a short distance away from the other Rax. Rose was combing her hair with her fingers, in a futile attempt to untangle the knots and clumps.

"You want some help with that?" the Doctor wondered, approaching her.

"It's no use!" Rose squealed, "I need conditioner! Look! Look at these knots!" she held out a lock of blonde hair for the Doctor to inspect. "I'm going to have to get it all cut off at this rate. I'll look like bleedin' Missy Higgins!"

Yikes. "It'll grow back." He replied, patting her shoulder.

Obviously, this wasn't the right answer, because Rose let out a yowl and buried her head against his chest.

"It's not fair." She cried, letting out a muffled sob.

He hugged her briefly, enjoying the feel of her against him much more than he would ever admit to himself. This side to Rose secretly relieved him, particularly after dealing with the stoic girl from Gallifrey.

"Curator, Rose!" Pg whispered urgently, "Hush now. Trading is starting, okay?"

Rose turned in the Doctor's arms, and pressed her back against his chest. There was no sign of tears or pending tantrums as she watched Domo Barter climb onto his tower of junk, in the centre of the tent.

"Traders, merchandise, quiet!"

Even through Rax eyes, Domo Barter was unimpressive to look at. He was absurdly fat, in the stereotypical Roman emperor way, but otherwise un-noteworthy. His voice however, was as dark and rich as Nile silt. It was a voice that, in another life, could have convinced a thousand men to give their lives to war.

"Before we commence," Domo Barter continued, eyeing the Rax in the room one by one, "I have two announcements. One, in ten days we will move back down the river, to the Forest of Ghosts. Two, the barter of the sky rock to Odjya and Nya is being suspended. There are new developments that will be discussed in today's session."

A few of the Rax muttered amongst themselves, but the conversation was mainly directed at the move, and not the sale of the TARDIS.

Before Domo Barter continued speaking, Kermk slunk into the tent, with the girl by his side. Kermk skulked to Pg's side, whilst the girl disappeared amongst the dense press of Rax bodies.

"I think we'll have a good deal." Kermk muttered to his brother, who merely nodded.

"First item of trade, this dazzling skin travel cloak." Domo Barter announced, holding up a parched scrap of yellow skin, "From Nya of the trading camp. Never be exposed on your travels again, eh?"

Rose tuned out as the trades continued. She watched enough to know that whenever someone traded with Domo Barter for one of the hundreds of items in his pile, that the chief always go the better deal. _Always._

"How do you know she's a time lord?" Rose wondered suddenly, lifting her face to stare at the Doctor, "She could be an ordinary person, just like me. Maybe she's just pretending?"

"She's not pretending."

"But how do you know?" Rose queried, trying in vain to catch his eye.

For once, the Doctor was at a loss for an explanation. How does a computer think? How do newts know to migrate back to their swamps of birth? How does a penguin recognise its mate?

Because it just does, and because, to a large extent, it doesn't. No newt has a road map. No penguin has a name tag. A computer doesn't have a brain.

"Just a feeling." The Doctor replied quietly.

From across the room, the girl stared at him.

"Hush, eh!" Domo Barter snarled over the commotion building in the tent, "Last item!"

Rose realised with a start that she and the Doctor were that last item. She elbowed him to make sure he was paying attention.

"Although I haven't inspected these items personally, our Ilium Neocort brother Kermk assures me they are of the highest quality. Beautifully crafted, genuine er-" for the first time that morning, Domo Barter faltered in his speech, "What did you call them again?"

"They are called Rose and the Curator." Kermk said, after clearing his throat. "Noisy creatures that live in a rock the colour of a stormy sky."

"There you have it, my Rax brothers and sisters. The proclaimed owners of the sky rock, here in the flesh. Can you tell us some of their features, Kermk?" Domo Barter arched one arm in a graceful, swooping gesture, which ended with his long middle finger pointed at the Doctor and Rose. Two dozen sets of Rax eyes followed the movement.

"Well, uh," Kermk licked his lips, and threw Pg a helpless glance, "They, uh. They can speak."

"Pray, speak for us." Domo Barter chuckled, directing the question at Rose.

"Nice to meet you all." Rose said. She smiled at the assembled Rax, who muttered in approval.

Encouraged, Kermk continued, "The Curator has the knowledge to fight off the desert worms, and Rose can cure terrible injuries with her mind. They know the secrets of fire, and can conduct simple conversations."

"Simple?" the Doctor fumed.

"Shush!" Pg hushed him, "You want to be useful, not threatening, eh?"

"They seem very talented." Domo Barter mused, his voice rising over the hubbub, "But what about times of peace? What about the days and weeks where there are no desert worms attacking us, and no terrible injuries. What else do these creatures do?"

"Uh." Kermk's eyes bugged out, "Well. Nothing, really."

"They consume food, and precious water, though." Domo Barter said.

"Well, yes."

"Are there only two of them?" one of the assembled Rax called, "Or are there more?"

Rose was a little confused. As far as she had been told, they weren't actually supposed to be traded. They were there to get the TARDIS back, and that was that. So what was up with all the questions?

"Yes." Kermk nodded, "As far as I know. But these two are male and female, a breeding pair. Come wet season, there will be twenty, thirty more of them."

At this point, the Doctor made a valiant attempt to cover Rose's mouth. He had never got around to telling her that the Rax assumed they were a breeding couple, and that it was important not to dissuade them from that untruth. Too late.

Rose brushed him off, and took a step closer to Kermk. "Breeding pair?" she demanded, "What in the universe gave you that bloody idea?"

Wordlessly, Kermk pointed to the Doctor.

"You!" Rose exclaimed, turning on him, "But you can't…I mean, it's impossible, isn't it? Why did you tell them that? And_ thirty_ children? I don't think so!"

"Ah, well. That was an assumption on their behalf." The Doctor said quickly, "I never said thirty. I didn't say any, actually. They just assumed. You know, Rose, that's the danger of assumption. It's based on assumption."

He prattled on a bit more, with Rose staring murderously at him, and the Rax just plain staring at him. He heard a giggle from across the room, and realised it was the girl.

"Okay." Domo Barter said, once the Doctor had talked himself out, "So essentially, what we have is two very noisy creatures, which aside from two phenomenal talents, do nothing but consume our resources. And they cannot breed, so there is no potential for expansion."

"If it's any consolation, I can live forever." The Doctor added helpfully.

"I think I could take or leave that." The chief Rax frowned at him. "Besides, you are both quite small. Not as strong as a Rax, I don't think."

"Maybe not with arm wrestling." Rose admitted. Her anger was fast fading. It was dawning on her that there was a very good reason the Doctor had let Kermk believe what he had.

"Look, we're really only here for the sky rock." The Doctor said, "Maybe you could just tell us where it is, and we can go."

Domo Barter growled. "I don't think so, Curator. The way I see it, there had already been an enormous expenditure of Rax effort on your behalf. Bringing your sky rock here, for instance. Bringing you two here. It is a dangerous journey from Ilium Neocort, and not one made lightly."

"There's probably something in the TARDIS we can repay you with. How do you feel about jelly babies?" the Doctor wondered. He had that all-too familiar sinking feeling.

The chief Rax ignored him. "I have two suggestions for your use. Kermk mentioned you knew how to fight the desert worm. Is this true?"

"Uh. Yes?" the Doctor guessed.

"Very well. You shall go into the desert, and bring back a desert worm. Dead or alive, though I will recommend dead. The skins and meat from an adult worm will be payment for our troubles. If you do this, then I, and the Rax of Gymnophiona, will return to you the sky rock, and you will be free to do as you will."

"And what if we can't?" Rose demanded, "Those desert dragon things are huge. What if we can't bring one back?"

Domo Barter stared at her. His expression was contemptuous. "Then I will trade you to the first Rax who wants you. And I suspect you shall be eaten. Fresh meat will be a welcome change, eh?"

His tone was nonchalant, as if he'd said, _nice weather_, not _we're going to eat you_.

"Hey, wait!" Pg protested, "Rose belongs to Kermk and I. So does the Curator. Maybe we don't want to send them into the desert, or have them eaten. Hey?"

"It is not for you to worry about." Domo Barter said, gesturing irascibly, "I hereby buy them from you directly. You can have free choice of the tower items."

The Gymnophionan Rax seemed to think this was a fair trade. Some begun to lick their fat lips whenever they glanced at the Doctor and Rose.

Kermk, who had been watching on anxiously, spoke up suddenly. "No." he said, "You can't buy them off us. I sold them already."

"To who?" Domo Barter scoffed, "What foolish Rax would want these noisy creatures?"

"Me."

The Doctor knew instantly who it was. His sinking feeling was great enough that he felt he might be sucked down into the bowels of the planet.

When Domo Barter spoke next, his voice contained a threat of hurt. "Odjya? You would really disobey me like this?"

Rax shuffled away from the girl, until she stood alone to face the chief.

"I did." She replied.

"Then you shall be the one to guide them into the desert. My word is law." Domo Barter snarled. "No one, not even a female, will go against me."

Rose glanced up at the Doctor. She felt like she was being left out of her own life.

"We're doomed, aren't we?" she mouthed.

He nodded in reply. The noise level in the tent had risen to shouting. None of the Rax were happy, not with Domo Barter, and not with the girl. The girl herself simply stood, and stared at the Doctor once more. He felt her gaze as a physical itch on his face, his neck, his spine. Whenever he turned, she was there.

"It is decided!" Domo Barter roared. "They will leave today!"

Pg had been arguing frantically for the chief to change his mind. He fell back from the centre of the tent, face stricken. There was nothing more he could do. Rose was going, to live or die. Eat or be eaten.

Rose clutched the Doctor, desperate not to loose him to the stream of massive bodies pressing passed them. Everyone was in a rush to leave.. The Doctor kissed Rose's forehead, and turned back to the crowd. He wanted to know what the girl thought of all this. Did she want to go? Was she afraid?

He caught her eye, and her expression sent shivers down his spine.

She smiled.

xxx xxx

_Guess where I got employed? The abattoir! Or however you spell it. Yay for me._

_Next chapter soon. Review if you like it, or you hate it, or you have any suggestions._

_References to 4th Doctor and Fight Club here, don't know if anyone picked them up. Oh well._


	14. Mamba

_**A/N:** Sorry this took so long to put up. Between moving and this DAMN INTERNET, I've been having real trouble submitting anything. I like this chapter, though. Cat fight! o.o o.o_

xxx xxx

"How old are you?"

The Doctor glanced up, annoyed at the interruption. Ten yards of burning sand separated him and Rose from the time lady, a vain attempt at privacy. Her questions were relentless, shouted over the shrill _'ka-ka-kaa'_ of sundown cicadas.

"Nine hundred, the last time I counted." the Doctor replied curtly.

Odjya merely nodded. She yawned lazily, and glanced down to watch her feet. She was barefoot, and the wet sand of the dragon trail squelched between her toes. A primitive hunting axe with a wicked spike at the top swung freely from her belt. From the amount of rust crusted on the blade, Rose guessed any victim of the axe was as likely to be killed from tetanus as from the blow.

"I think I'm gonna take a holiday on earth once we're outta this dump." Rose said, surveying the landscape dismally.

Even in the brilliant sunset, the desert colours were strangely muted. Gold dunes, turquoise sky, dimmed by a veneer of wind-blown sand. Light and colour oozed from the horizon, land and sky blending together seamlessly.

"What I wouldn't give for a cup of tea…" the Doctor's eyes misted over, and he smiled vaguely. A classic sufferer of caffeine withdrawal.

The trio had left Gymnophiona two hours earlier, much later in the day than Rose had anticipated. From the moment trade had closed, to the first steps outside the Rax colony, they had been crowded. Pg and Kermk wanted to buy their 'creatures' back. Domo Barter wanted to trade for the sky-rock, as insurance. The other Rax took a sudden and intense interest in what could be next week's dinner.

For the most part, Odjya had left them alone: she had luggage to pack. Though, from what Rose had seen, aside from a few water canteens and a small, bone shovel, all she had packed was weapons. Now that Gymnophiona was far behind them, Rose was desperate for some privacy. Odjya wasn't having any of it.

"Who wants this? It's the only throwing axe I have." The time lady asked.

She held up a another axe, this one even more sinister than the first. It was wrought from a single piece of black metal, with an almost scythe-like blade. The shaft bucked and twisted, shaped like the neck of a ibis. The lower part of the shaft was straight, with two narrow spikes sticking out horizontally.

Rose made a face. She almost felt sorry for the creature that had that axe thrown at it.

"That's not Raxin," the Doctor frowned, shifting his eyes from the axe to Odjya, "This lot are still in the bone and skin stage. They're still millennia away from steel weapons."

"So?"

"So it's African." Rose piped, hoping for a quick end to the conversation, "I've seen 'em in the museum."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing. In his mind, he was slowly reconstructing the events of the last week, trying to figure out exactly when he lost his mind. First the time lady appeared, and now Rose could pick out the origin of something before he did. He was definitely going crazy.

"That's a clever little ape you've got there." Odjya said, smiling indulgently at Rose, "Would you like to use this?" she wiggled the axe.

"On you, maybe." Rose retorted.

"Witty, too." The time lady smiled again. "She's human, correct?"

The Doctor grinned. He felt a little foolish talking about Rose when she was right beside him, and his face flushed red. "That she is. The ambassador of a truly marvellous race of people. Curious, intrepid explorers, gradually making their way into the stars." He said, slipping an arm around Rose's waist, "The universe's children."

Rose rolled her eyes, but secretly she was pleased that the Doctor had stuck up for her. She reciprocated his gesture, resting one hand on the hollow curve of his hip. He smelt of musk and blood and sweat, a stale odour which Rose found increasingly intoxicating.

"Ah." Odjya looked doubtful, "I see. And how old is she? It is a female, isn't it?"

Rose glowered. "Of course I'm bloody female! I look the same as you do!"

If anything, the time lady looked offended. "I doubt that. You're people would have just come down out of the trees. Little more than monkeys, really."

The Doctor covered his face with his hand. If this was a hallucination, now was the time for it to end.

"What is it with you time lords!" Rose shrieked, "You all think you're so high and mighty! I'll tell you one thing, you," she glared at Odjya, voice dripping sarcasm, "_Pinnacle of evolution_, you're obviously not as grand as you think! If you're all that genius, why are you two the only ones left?"

"At the pinnacle of evolution, you loose the ability to adapt. If you don't change, you die. Rule of life." Odjya said, her voice low. Menacing.

She crossed the distance between herself and Rose quickly, and crouched down three feet away. Rose halted abruptly, turning to stare at the time lady. Odjya's yellow eyes were cold, with a remoteness of expression usually reserved for bristling lions or snakes. Thick lines of scar tissue criss-crossed her face, shockingly white against her bronze skin. Short blonde dreadlocks fell to her jaws. The length was slightly uneven, like she'd hacked at it with a machete. Combined with her monkey limbs, her appearance was wild.

"What, you think you're scary?" Rose almost laughed, "You and the Doctor are smart, I'll give you that. But if you're going to fight someone…leave it to the people who fight everyone."

"You're people fight everyone, do they?" Odjya growled.

"I've never fought a Gallifryan before. But yeah, I'll give it a go." Rose replied. She didn't know why she was so eager to fight. It wasn't something she did regularly.

But something about the time lady gave her the creeps. If humanity has one prevailing characteristic, it's the resolution to conquer that which it fears. Wolves, ice, fire, space. Rose's pulse thundered through her, aggravated by the promise of violence.

"Rose, no." the Doctor protested, but his voice was weak. He wasn't sure enough of himself to stop what was happening.

"Come on, then-"

Rose was still speaking when Odjya tackled her to the ground. The time lady didn't bother with preliminaries.

"Get off!" Rose snarled, shoving the other woman off her.

The Doctor stepped back, watching in awed fascination. He licked his lips.

Odjya arched her back as she tumbled to the ground, slamming her elbows against the wet sand, and flipping herself onto her stomach. In a blur of movement, she lunged for Rose again.

Rose yelped, and scrambled out of the way. The time lady missed her, but spun and found her balance once more. Both axes had fallen, forgotten, to the ground. Rose prayed silently that it wouldn't come to the point where she needed one.

"Monkey." Odjya spat at her. Her teeth were brilliant white, glistening like exposed bone in the red wound of her mouth.

"Bitch." Rose snapped back.

She dove for the other, and slammed bodily into her. Both women crashed to the sand, in a tangle of limbs and snagging garments.

The Doctor smiled to himself.

Pinned, Odjya struggled frantically to be freed. Rose shifted slightly, taking a hold of the time lady's wrists. She rested her knees on Odjya's abdomen, with her snow boots digging into the time lady's thighs. It looked absurd, but had the other women effectively trapped. There wasn't much she could do but wriggle.

"Give up." Rose panted, struggling to keep balance.

Odjya didn't reply. She hissed through her teeth, the wiry muscles of her bare arms tightening and writhing. She pushed up against Rose's grip, slowly but surely gaining leverage.

Rose drew her arms up a fraction, then slammed them back down. The time lady stared at her, eyes screaming burning hatred. This was one nasty, if not tough, little weasel.

"Maybe this is why your people died." Rose said, low enough that the Doctor wouldn't hear her, "You underestimated you opponents."

Odjya screamed. She twisted, screaming all the while, tipping Rose off her. Odjya ripped her wrists from Rose's grip, and grabbed the human girl by her hair.

"Hey!" the Doctor shouted, moving in to help.

Winded, Rose slid her hand beneath her, rising on all fours. She would have gladly stayed down, but Odjya's searing grip on her hair demanded she get up. Her face stung from the impact with the wet sand.

Now that she was in charge, Odjya was calmer. With one hand still woven through Rose's hair, she used the other to probe the back of the girl's skull. Her fingers pressed down on the thick skin at the back of Rose's neck, then crept higher. She explored the horseshoe niche where spine met skull, and pressed her fingers higher again.

"Ah-hah!" Odjya enthused at last. She grinned wickedly up at the Doctor, "There you have it."

"What?" the Doctor wondered, gazing at the back of Rose's head.

"Orbital lump." The time lady had two fingers pushing against a bony lump on the girl's head. "Proof that there's some Neanderthal in this monkey's heritage."

"Let me feel." The Doctor said.

Obligingly, Odjya climbed off Rose. She moved aside to make room for the Doctor.

"I hate you both." Rose muttered.

"Rose, you old ape. You can get up, you know." The Doctor chuckled. He helped the other to her feet, before massaging the back of her head with his fingers.

At first, she thought he was being nice. Then she realised he was checking for whatever it was that Odjya had found.

"She's right, ducky." The Doctor raised an eyebrow at Rose, his hand still on her head. "You've got an orbital lump. It's believed, though no one is sure, that the original Cro-Magnons didn't have these lumps, and they were exclusive to human predecessors, the Neanderthals. As you know, the Neanderthals died out around five thousand years after the Cro-Magnons appeared. No one really knows why, but one theory is that they simply interbred with the Cro-Magnons, and the races were assimilated. Hence, some modern humans have these remnant orbital lumps."

"I'm not a monkey." Rose said, a tad unsteadily.

Odjya snorted. "You're an ape, though."

She was still glaring at Rose, but she'd found a new respect for the girl. Well, maybe 'respect' is too strong a word. Wariness and circumspection might have been more accurate.

As an assurance that the fight was over, Odjya turned away from Rose, and scooped her axes up off the ground. She padded away, continuing along the wide underground river that was the dragon trail, her feet leaving only slight shadows in the wet sand.

"She's weird." Rose said, watching her adversary leave.

"Kind of creepy." The Doctor agreed. He smiled down at Rose. Her black shirt was ratty and worn, smeared with clinging sand. There were big water marks on her knees and butt, where she'd been pushed to the ground. Her hair was a mess, and her cheek was swollen.

"Did I ever told you you're gorgeous?" he wondered, drawing her closer to him.

"No." Rose huffed, trying to regain the dignity she lost during the fight, "But it's about time you did."

The Doctor laughed softly.

"You're gorgeous." He grinned easily, eyes warm.

Pressed against his chest, Rose struggled to see his face, his expression. "You really think so?"

He hugged her tightly. "The sun itself would turn belly-up just for a look at you."

Rose laughed, and pulled away from him. She wove her fingers between his, and the two of them set off after Odjya.

"You know that's impossible." Rose said, still giggling at his comment.

"I know." He replied.

"Thanks anyway."

xxx

That night, Roes had the first shift.

It was pointless really for her to take a shift at all. Both the Doctor and Odjya seemed to sleep with both eyes open.

They were hidden amongst the dunes, a hundred yards from the dark streak of the dragon trail. Desert worms were notoriously common along the trail, and no one wanted to run into one at night. Or ever, really.

Far above, the sky hung fat and glistening with stars. It looked as tangible as it was intangible, like the stars were no more than tiny bubbles of impurities suspended in a thick greasy gel.

Below, the sand was warm. Even when the air was chilly, the desert floor was always warm, even hot. The camp fire had been made more for the comfort flickering flames provided for the lonely watchman than the heat.

"This planet is a dump." Rose murmured. She blinked. Her eyes were puffy with fatigue. Another hour, and her shift would end. Rose wasn't sure she'd last that long.

The Doctor twisted restlessly in his sleep. He muttered something just out of audible range, and flopped onto his back. His sleeping skins had been long since tipped to the desert floor, and Rose had given up replacing them.

She smiled at him, taking her time to linger on his lean frame, more exposed than usual in just a half-undone button up shirt. His eyes were closed, but his breathing was fast, and his expression was agitated. He'd been much the same every time he slept since they'd left Ilium Neocort. Very anxious.

"I wonder what's going on in that fat head of yours." She said to his sleeping figure, smiling inwardly.

There was an object in the palm of her hand, and Rose fingered it ceaselessly. Even that evening, when they'd hurried to catch up with Odjya, Rose had had no time to tell the Doctor about it. And she sure as hell didn't want the time lady seeing it.

Rose held her hand out in front of her, examining the object. It was small and round. The back was flat, and crusted red with rust. The dome of glass at the front was cracked and yellowing, almost obscuring what lay beneath.

Only by squinting had Rose been able to tell what it was. It was no great wonder that it had baffled Pg, who'd pressed it into her hand just before she'd left Gymnophiona.

She remembered the young Rax's face, so anxious and full of things unsaid. Rose suspected she often wore the same expression whenever the Doctor was in danger.

_Full of things unsaid_.

The object in her hand was a compass.

The Doctor was dreaming.

xxx

Footsteps in the hall outside. The slap of rubber against tiles.

"Just a little more time."

Not shifting his stare from the door for an instant, the Doctor rummaged blindly through the drawer he'd managed to unlock. Something sharp, the blade of a pair of metal scissors, a knife, bit into his hand.

He gasped, but kept groping. No looking down.

The door hand clicked with the report of a gunshot. With a groan, the door swung open.

A man strode into the room. His suit was worn, more than worn. Positively shabby, for a professor at the university. Though he looked familiar, the Doctor wasn't really sure what the professor taught. He hardly saw how it mattered, now he'd been caught out. Breaking into a professor's desk meant instant expulsion.

But maybe…maybe it wasn't too late. The professor didn't seem surprised at the scene before him. He crossed the room, with the Doctor still fumbling blindly through the drawer. The blade sunk into his hand a second time.

"You'll never find it like that." The professor said.

"What?"

"For Gallifrey's sake, look at what you're doing!"

The Doctor risked a glance at the drawer. His hand was bleeding, but he hardly noticed.

There it was! The book! The Doctor stared at it with a mixture of remorse and yearning.

"Co-ordinates for all the forbidden planets in the multiverse." The professor mused, regarding the slim leather-bound book. It was no more remarkable in appearance than a book of addresses. "Now, what do you want with that?"

"I- I -" the Doctor had been a young man then, unsure of himself, and his aspirations. "I want to travel, sir."

The professor smiled, and the dream warped.

Or at least the Doctor assumed it did. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his bed in his dorm room, staring up at the ceiling.

xxx xxx

_Snarf snarf.  
Thank you to everyone who reviewed and was patient with this chapter, and also a special thanks to Madame 'Nana' Boyle, for showing me her fantasic collection of African axes. This woman is 104, and her house is full of axes. Creep-eee.  
How cool did the devil guy look on Doctor Who on Saturday? Very, that's how._

_Next chapter up as soon as possible._


	15. Warhead

_**A/N:** Yes, I know this chapter is way too short. It's only half the chapter, in fact. But I'm having terrible trouble with the internet, and this is as much as I could put up (it drops out about every fifteen seconds). This chapter is...odd. Might explain a few things.  
Sorry about the terrible delays, I moved last weekend and between the internet trouble and MOOOving, I just ran out of time. Still working on debugging this virus-riddled computer. Updates will have to be weekly...ugh..._

xxx xxx

"The scream of the warheads."

"The screams of the people."

Odjya sat back to watch him. She was smiling, good-humoured. Like she thought it was funny. "The screams of a thousand time ships launching and crashing back down. The screams of people being crushed under vessels, buildings, being ripped limb from limb. The screams of out hidden enemy picking us out, one by one."

"Stop smiling."

The Doctor scowled at her. His hearts were thundering against the wall of his chest, the pounding blood in his ears almost drown out her words. He was angry, angry and afraid.

"The lovers and the parents and the children, huddled over their dead in the streets." Odjya shook her head, still smiling. "Knowing it meant death to be exposed, but remaining none-the-less. We all knew we would die, Doctor. We knew no one could get out alive."

"But you did." He said.

He watched her dismally from across the camp fire. Rose was sound asleep beside him, and the Doctor said a silent prayer of thanks. He didn't want her to hear this, what he had done, the pain he had caused.

Of course, the time war wasn't his fault. He'd been its end, not its beginning.

"As did you." Odjya stared back at him, her gaze level. Her tone was bold, defiant, but far from cold. It was almost as though she was daring him to confess, or to prove her wrong.

He couldn't. Couldn't prove her wrong; there he was, flesh and blood, entertaining his fantasies. But was she really just a dream? Should he confess, and shatter this illusion, that he wasn't the last of his people? Or should he keep it going, for just a little longer.

It was one thing to be the last of your kind. It was another thing entirely to be the catalyst of their destruction.

"Yeah, well. I got lucky." The Doctor said, looking away.

"Can you honestly call it lucky?" Odjya gave a short, brash laugh. "I lost everyone. I watched my people die. There was nothing I could do."

The Doctor looked up sharply. "But you survived. Everyone else died, and you survived. I've travelled, Odjya, and I know. I've searched for a hundred years, and found no one, only to stumble upon you, hidden in the prehistoric Beta desert."

He would have said more, but Odjya interrupted. "Almost too good to be true, isn't it? Has it truly only been a hundred years for you?"

"A hundred, three hundred. Six hundred. Time has changed for me." The Doctor shrugged nonchalantly. It was true. Time wasn't what it had been. He aged, and the centuries treated him differently.

"I must have been here a thousand years." Odjya said. She stared at him, eyes drowning in black. Black from side to side, totally lost in shadow. "At first, I was merely waiting. I waited a hundred years, searched the entire continent. At last I came to realise that it was possible that no one else made it here, that maybe no one else at all survived.

"So I began to search."

Her voice regained its hard, cruel tone. Odjya had made up her mind. She knew.

"Obviously you never returned to Gallifrey." The Doctor remarked. He tried to keep his voice casual and friendly.

"I always planned to. But there was no way for me to be certain that the war was over, or that it would ever be over. I kept to the back water parts of the universe, primordial Raxacoricotallapatorius, and your pet's solar system."

Odjya gestured to Rose's still form.

So, she was tinkering around earth. That would explain the African axes, and the Sycorax, which hailed from the largest of Neptune's moons. It would even go a ways to explain her dress fashion, the bare feet and boy's khaki shorts, so far removed from the archaic robes worn by the majority of Gallifryan officials.

"And when you found on one," the Doctor studied the time lady carefully as he spoke, "You decided to play God. You decided to save the species."

Odjya frowned at him. "They're our people, Doctor. What is life without companionship and understanding? I have no desire to be a hermit for the rest of eternity."

"You said it yourself. Change or die. The time lords hadn't changed in ten thousand years before the war."

The Doctor felt his skin prickle, so cold was the glare Odjya wore. Absently, he reached down for Rose's hand, and gripped it tightly. Rose groaned, but didn't wake.

"Are you saying we deserved to die?" Odjya demanded, yellow light glinting off the black pools of her eyes.

"I'm just saying everything has its time. And maybe our time has come, and gone." He tried to meet her gaze, and his resolve melted under the force of her stare.

"You killed them."

The Doctor gazed up at the impossible Beta sky, startling gold at the horizon in the wake of dawn, crowded with stars for the rest of its bulk, and tried to ignore the statement.

"You killed them, you bastard."

Hard to ignore a girl who's spent a thousand years mourning her lost people while she screams at you. Hard to think of the reasons you did it, which seemed like such _good reasons_ at the time.

"Speak to me!"

I did it because…I was tired of war. We were such an old race. We had reached the end of the line, anyway. There's a thousand million billion other lives out there that would have been lost otherwise…

"I'm sorry."

His words were so soft, so ashamed, that Odjya stopped screaming for a moment, and just stared at him. She was panting.

Now it the time to pray.

"Odjya, I-"

"Save it." Odjya snapped. "It doesn't matter, anyway. You're here now, and that's what counts. You can help me."

After a moment of stunned, choked silence, the Doctor managed to say, "Help you with what?"

"Stop the war, destroy the Daleks. Rebuild our society." Odjya shrugged. She was so casual about it, the Doctor almost thought he'd heard wrong, and she'd actually said something along the lines of 'how's the weather in Queensland? Nice day here, isn't it?'

"But." He said, before the words caught up with him.

And then he realised what he should have known all along. The Rax, the Sycorax, it's not out of place at all. He was right all along. Beta is uninhabited, because nothing can survive on Beta.

Unless you have a God, a Creator, a maniac with a time machine, who can go back and erase all the wrong ever done.

The Rax would fight the Sycorax, because it was in their nature to do so. They would force each other to evolve and, guided by a God, triumph over such endeavours as space exploration, time travel. Six million years before they were supposed to.

And when they had colonised new planets, enslaved primates and eradicated troublesome little slugs? It would all be up to the God. A living God was a dictator beyond the touch of death.

"But you can't." Even in his own ears, the Doctor's words sounded lame. "Nothing can survive on Beta."

Not even the desert worms, which spread their way from world to world, infesting and devouring every other living life form, until they were it.

"They can, if I say they can." Odjya smirked.

The anger and accusation was gone from her face, sucked back down into the abyss of her soul, if such she possessed.

"It's wrong. You can't change things like this." The Doctor protested. He didn't look at her, instead keeping his eyes on Rose.

"Tell me, Doctor." Odjya leant forwards, eyes boring into him, "You have this ape for a companion, and you would have me believe you long for no other camaraderie. But I wonder, is it all an act? Or did the war and the loss of your entire people truly leave you unaffected?"

When he didn't answer, Odjya continued. "Did you not lose somebody close to you?"

_Of course I lost someone, you miserable bitch_, the Doctor thought bitterly. He had been lonely all his life, but there had been people… Romana, even K-9, until the unit had been found earlier on that year. He missed them both terribly.

Beautiful, genius Romana. Not until Rose had someone filled the hole in him left by Romana. Even then, Rose was just…

"I lost people. I lost everybody, just like you." The Doctor risked a glance at Odjya. She was watching him carefully. "But I had no choice. If there was to be anything left, anything at all…it had to be done."

The time lady smiled coolly. Her voice was smooth, level, programmed. "And now, I will make things so that it never has to be done."

It was wrong, wrong, wrong. Time changed, and the order of time changed, every day. But nothing should ever be altered so much, or so deliberately.

The Doctor knew that, and yet also knew that he should be over joyed. His people, alive. No more angst, no more guilt. No more salt-in-the-wound comments about him killing his entire race. No more genocide.

"Nothing can survive on Beta." He repeated, his eyes drifting back to Rose.

It was an offer to be considered, certainly.

Then Odjya dropped the real bombshell, the warhead she'd prepared for an occasion exactly like this.

"With me, you can bear children."

In Rose's curled-up hand, there was an object.

The Doctor glanced up away from it, to stare at Odjya. Her eyes were cold as ever, studying his reaction carefully.

He opened his mouth to speak. "I-"

With a resonating BOOM, the ground beneath them gave way. The Doctor lunged for Rose, to save her or himself, he didn't know. It was too late, anyway.

The dishwater yellow light of dawn shimmered across the rising neck of a monster, a desert worm, heaving up out of the sand. by sheer millimetres, the Doctor avoided being thrown onto the last hot embers of the camp fire, dragging Rose away with him.

Odjya toppled onto it, and there was a hiss of charring flesh. The worm's sleek head now swayed ten yards above the desert sand. Long lines of star-lit saliva dripped from its jaws.

The earth beneath them buckled again, and a second gruesome head erupted up in a spray of sand.

"Odjya! Rose!" the Doctor bellowed.

Rose's hand was torn from his grip as th second worm reared up between them. Odjya was nowhere to be seen, nor heard. Adreniline thundered through his veins, as hot and cold as liquid nitrogen.

"Fire! We need fire!"

The Doctor stared, trembling but frozen, at the swaying beasts before him. He barely recognised Rose's voice as she screamed for fire.

Sometimes, when you have everything to do, it's difficult to do anything at all.

"Doctor, wake up! We need fire!"

There were many things unsaid.

xxx xxx

_Like the rest of the chapter, for example._

_Really, really sorry. For everything._

_Thank Hellsing's Rip Van Winkle for the chapter name._


	16. Fire

_**A/N: **Thought I'd do something different and start with a lyric. Yay System! Sorry this chapter has been so long coming (there's only four more chapters, I think). Hey! It's my only day off today, and I had to drive 100 kilometres to use the computer. So go easy on me. I'm living in a caravan at the moment, and at four-thirty in the morning, when I get up, it's C-O-L-D! Brr.  
This chapter is dedicated to my brother's first son, Levi, who was born on Friday night._

xxx xxx

I have a problem that I cannot explain

I have no reason that it should've been so plain

I have no questions but I sure have excuses

I lack the reason why I should be so confused

I, I know, how I feel when I'm around you

I, don't know, how I feel when I'm around you

-Roulette, System of a Down

xxx

Where was she?

The Doctor squinted into the dark, his mind reeling, body tense and frozen. Before him, the twin hydra heads of the desert worms swayed hypnotically. Ready to strike.

Where was Rose?

"Doctor!"

To his left, the nicotine yellow smear of predawn was spreading. Stars faded overhead, but the light was still too weak to do anymore than outline the worm's smooth flanks.

"Rose?"

"Get away from them!"

Rose was crouched behind a short sand dune, watching. The Doctor was mere feet away from the worms, but a half dozen yards beyond Rose's reach. She was still groggy from sleep, and trembling violently. Her stomach squirmed with nausea, fear for herself, fear for the Doctor. Too much fear.

"Doctor, get back!" she shrieked.

Grubby light shimmied along a rearing serpent neck. A split second later, the huge axe head crashed nose-first to the ground.

The second worm let out a shrill hiss, and jerked the remainder of its colossal body from the sand. It writhed across the dunes, directionless at first, then heading straight towards Rose.

Yards away, the Doctor was sprawled out on the sand, winded but otherwise unharmed. A dawn zephyr, stirred by the heat of the rising sun, kicked dust in his face. Since only the very top of the worm's head had hit him, the Doctor guessed the gentle breeze had been enough to throw it off the scent.

"Must be my lucky day." He groaned, propping himself up on one elbow.

Silhouetted against the murky blue sky, the desert worm loomed over him. It hissed, globs of drool dripping from its cavernous mouth.

"Or maybe not."

Forgetting the fire in his stomach and the lead in his limbs, the Doctor scrambled up, battered joggers slipping on the sand.

He ran on blindly, head filled with the guttural roars of the worm behind him. He slid down a dune, clambered up another, tumbled down the next. There was no time to hide, no place concealed enough even if there was time. The worm had his trail now, and it wasn't letting up.

"Over here!"

A woman's shout. Not Rose. It must have been Odjya then, which meant she hadn't been killed. A promising start to the day.

The Doctor steered himself in the direction of the call. His foot hit a strangely soft dune, sunk in, and stuck. He wrenched it out, barely aware of what he was doing, and kept running. The cool sand was a sudden shock under the same foot, and the Doctor realised his sneaker was missing.

The worm had a confusing moment where it was suddenly confronted with two delicious-smelling meals, one moving and one stagnant. The stagnant one was almost overwhelming in its potency, full of the smell of life and sweat and blood.

"And Rose told me to wear socks." The Doctor smiled to himself, pausing to watch the desert worm rip his beloved abandon Chuck Taylor behind.

Odjya wasn't far away. There was a patch of red, welted skin on her forearm that looked almost as fierce as her expression. Instead of nursing the wounded appendage, Odjya let it hang freely by her side, forsaken. For her part, the time lady was squatting in the shelter of a small outcrop of sandstones.

"Are you injured?" Odjya demanded, rising when she saw the Doctor.

"Not really. Bit annoyed. They could have waited until day time until they assailed us." He grinned, not looking annoyed in the slightest, "How're you? Sore arm, I see."

Odjya gave a one-shoulder shrug. "Flesh wounds are nothing. Where's your ape, by the way?"

"She's-"

The Doctor stopped mid-sentence, and stared at the time lady. Rose! He glanced around futilely. There was a definite lack of Rose.

"If you wait for a moment-"

Odjya didn't bother finishing her own sentence. The Doctor was gone, running back out into the open.

"That human is going to get him killed." The time lady muttered, lifting an axe from her belt. "And that won't be good at all."

Shrill screams echoed around the dunes. Human or desert worm, it was hard to tell. Odjya had never been much of a connoisseur of screams. She didn't even know if the new sound, the howl of agony or frustration or whatever else, belonged to the Doctor.

Axe in hand, Odjya stepped out from behind her shelter.

She did know one thing.

That girl was getting in the way.

xxx

"Rose!"

The Doctor was panting hard, openly terrified. He couldn't count the amount of times he'd fallen in the sand, but he guessed it was enough to put Frodo to shame.

Feet away, the desert worms had their slimy backs to him. Both of the amphibian monsters were crowded around a single, small object, the huddled figure of Rose. Now, as he called out, one worm snapped its head around to listen.

The flaps of skin that covered its nostrils flared up, open, and the worm snorted deeply. Nearly deaf and completely blind, the desert worm's sense of smell was second to none. They could smell life through the body of the earth, buried miles deep. Their existence was that of an caged animal, trapped by their own lack of senses. They were mad, cruel things, that lived only to seek out life and destroy it, extinguish the scent, so they could be left to their own dark oblivion.

This fact was something very much used to the advantage of that pompous race that called themselves the creators. It was also a fact that ultimately contributed to their extinction.

"Doctor! Where have you been?" Rose demanded, rasing her head to glare at him. "These bloody worms are trying to eat me, you know!"

"Shh!" the Doctor hissed furiously at her, finger pressed to his lips.

He took a cautious step back, trying to get his bearings. He was actually very close to where they'd set up camp. Sleeping skins and travel packs were strewn across several metres of churned-up desert floor. The fire pit was closest. It was dead, no flames stirring amongst the grey ashes.

"Fire!" Rose mouthed, when the Doctor glanced helplessly at her.

She gave a short scream and lunged to the side as one worm's head crashed towards her. It missed by inches, and Rose let out a frightened wail. She knew there was no chance of her outrunning the worms once they locked onto her, and Rose had no shoes to spare. Both boots were sitting, quite forgotten, in her travel pack.

"There's none!" the Doctor mouthed back urgently. Perspiration beaded on the back of his neck. Cold sweat felt like ants crawling down his back.

"Hurry!" Rose cried, wringing her hands. She barely managed to scrambled out of the way a second time, the worm slamming its head down once again.

This was too much for the worm that had been endeavouring to get a fix on the Doctor. He was too confusing, moving too much, not offering any noises to ascertain he was living. It recalled the last thing it had eaten that smelled like that had not tasted particularly good at all.

That left Rose with the problem of two worms lunging at her, one after the other, while she wailed and scrambled madly.

"Do something!" she shrieked, presumably to the Doctor, scuttling out of the way of yet another strike on all fours.

He didn't want to die.

Neither did Rose.

"Hold on!" he shouted, jerking into action.

There _was_ still life in the ashes. A tiny coal glowed orange for a moment, then died. Never mind that. There were more ashes, more coals, buried beneath that dead top layer.

"You'll heal."

The Doctor said these two words of self-encouragement under his breath, moving to stand over the fire pit. He ground his teeth together and stooped over, pushing his hands through the warm grey ash at the top of the pit, and into the fiery hot depths.

A wisp of fire raced up the length of his arm for a second, and the potent smell of burning hair was thick in the air. Never mind that. His shoulders trembled with the effort it took not to pull his hands out of the coals, away from the searing heat.

"Hurry up!" Rose screamed, by now more than a dozen yards away.

"I'm trying!" the Doctor snarled back.

That was it. That was enough.

With a gasp, the Doctor jerked his hands, buried to the wrist, out of the fire pit. The coals cupped in his hands blazed orange and black, tiny flames flickering between his fingers. There wasn't words enough to describe the pain.

"Flesh wounds are nothing hogwash!" the Doctor growled, jaw grinding.

Stiffly, he jogged towards the worms. They were both swaying, and hissing to each other.

The Doctor bellowed wordlessly at them, and crushed the burning ashes into the flank of the closest worm. The amphibian flesh bubbled under the coals, then split open. Clear yellow fluid flowed over the Doctor's hands as he pushed the coals deeper into the wound, struggling to keep his balance while the worm flailed madly. Its massive body spasmed, slamming against the Doctor. His back hit the ground, and he slid across the sand before coming to a rest.

"Bloody hell." He panted, taking the moment to rest and regroup. His thoughts were all over the place. There was blood in his mouth, and a rush of warmth down his face meant he was bleeding.

Flesh wounds, nothing to worry about. There was no pain anywhere, except his hands. No broken bones this time.

That meant he had no excuse to delay saving Rose. Oh, well.

"Here, take this." The Doctor stared at the figure hovering over him.

Slim, girlish, holding out an axe. Odjya.

The time lady held out her free hand, and the Doctor reached up to take it. Odjya took one look at his hands, and grabbed his wrist instead.

"Take it. I'll fix any injuries afterwards." Odjya said, after she hauled the Doctor to his feet. She handed him the axe, the one Rose claimed to be African.

The time lady took a second axe from her belt, and started towards the worms. Rose was nowhere in sight.

"Odjya, wait."

She stopped. Without looking back, she said, "We have to hurry if we're going to stop the Gymnophionan from devouring her."

The Doctor stared at her. For a second, even the raging pain in his hands seemed dulled. His hearts beat as furiously fast as they had when he was afraid. Well. He still was afraid.

"Can you really have a child?" he demanded, tightening his grip on the axe. Letting the pain drag him back to reality.

"I can." Odjya said.

She waited a moment longer, wondering if there were any more questions. When none came, she trotted down the dune. She twirled the axe between her fingers as if were nothing more than a cheerleaders baton, anticipating the fight.

The Doctor stared at her retreating back for a few long seconds before following. His jaw ground back and forth. For once in his life, all his confidence was gone. He was almost reluctant.

Odjya, on the other hand, was positively ecstatic. She was humming to herself, just softly enough that the Doctor wouldn't overhear. They had their prize; with a worm or two in tow, they could go back to Gymnophiona that very day. From there, it would only be a matter of days before everything was ready.

Imagine! Gallifrey, alive.

Almost casually, Odjya stepped up the closest worm. This wasn't the injured creature. That worm was several feet ahead of her, making frenzied attempts to capture the human girl.

"Good bye." Odjya hummed. She brought the axe up in a graceful arc, twirled it between two fingers, and slashed down.

The worm's bloated side split from back to belly. Odjya twirled the axe again, leant back, and flicked forwards. Intestine, brown in the now gold light, slopped out to the sand. A horizontal slash, as long as Odjya's arm span, bisected the first cut.

"And now your friend." She said, smiling at the dying worm.

Odjya sidesteps the worm's wild thrashes, and flittered over to the second creature. She had to move fast to come between the worm, who was readying itself for a strike, and the human.

"Watch your head, monkey." Odjya warned, stepping in front of the girl.

"Do you want a hand?" the Doctor called, jogging to catch up.

Odjya smiled. One good, swing slash opened the injured worm from the base of its body to the bony ridge of its jaw. She jumped to one side to avoid to rush of purplish blood that poured from the split worm, and hung the axe back on her belt.

"I'm fine on my own, thanks." Odjya said, smirking.

"Thank you!" Rose squeaked.

As much as she disliked the time lady, Rose had to admit that Odjya was far better at dealing with the worms. In fact, she was so good at it that Rose decided that she would make sure to get out of the way straight away, and let the other woman deal with it should they encounter any worms in the future. Didn't want to crowd her, after all.

"Are you alright?" the Doctor demanded, brushing past Odjya and crouching down beside Rose. Feet away, the worm twitched one last time, and slumped down, lifeless.

"Yeah, I'm alright." Rose gave him a small smile. "I think we both would have been worm meat if it wasn't for _her_, though."

The Doctor lay the axe down carefully on the sand. He hugged Rose tightly, squeezing her hard enough that she could scarcely breath.

"Rose, Rose, Rose." He mumbled, pressing his face against hers, "I almost lost you, Rose."

"Okay!" Rose choked, "Down, boy!"

"Oh. Sorry." The Doctor released her. He leant back on his heels, not taking his eyes off hers.

"Are you okay?" Rose wondered, fearful of this grinning maniac before her. "Since when are you so worried about a silly ol' ape like me, hey?"

There was more than relief for her safety in the Doctor's mind. He stared at her, this human he cherished so much, and suddenly felt greatly relieved.

It didn't matter that Odjya was a time lady. It didn't matter that she was the last, the very last, of his people that he would ever see. Odjya had asked him a question, and, looking at Rose, he knew the answer.

"I'm glad you're not hurt." The Doctor said, his eyes warm.

"I really do hate to interrupt." Odjya cut in before Rose could reply, "But seeing as we do have the worms here, I see no reason to stay any longer. As soon as we pack up camp, we can return to Gymnophiona."

Rose glared at her. "How about you do that, then? Give us some privacy for a minute."

"Doctor? Do you want privacy with your pet?" Odjya asked, as politely as she could manage. Only with iron determination she kept from leaping over the Doctor's head and strangling the stupid monkey girl.

"Yeah." The Doctor glanced up Odjya, who was standing far too close for his liking. "We'll be up in a minute to help you pack."

Odjya stared at Rose for a moment longer, before spinning on her heel and stalking off across the dunes.

"She's a bit intense, isn't she?" Rose said, watching the time lady leave.

The Doctor shrugged. "She's alright. Wouldn't want to spend eternity with her, though."

Rose couldn't help but laugh. They were in the middle of a desert, a hundred miles from the TARDIS and a million miles from home, and the Doctor was worried about commitment.

"What?" he wondered, giving her a Look.

"It's nothing." Rose giggled, crying almost as much as she was laughing. "I just don't know what I'd do without you."

"That's good. There, uh. Rose, listen." The Doctor's expression was serious. He was almost frowning, more like he was about to announce an impending war on earth, or the revival of the Daleks, rather than what he actually had to say.

"Go on." Rose smiled, eyes shinning. She put a hand to her mouth to conceal a grin.

"There's just. Something. I just want to, you know. Just tell you. Something." The Doctor stammered, diverting his gaze to the ground. "Before. You know. Anything else happens."

Rose stopped smiling, and snapped to attention. Was this it? Was this what she'd spent so long waiting for?

"I, um. I." at this stage, the Doctor was staring hard at the ground. "I. What's that, Rose?"

"Oh, that." Rose followed his gaze. The broken compass Pg had given her was sitting on the ground between her and the Doctor. "I put it in my pocket before. Must've fallen out."

"It's a compass."

"Pg gave it to me. 's nothing, really. Odjya probably dropped it, and he found it." Rose picked the compass up out of the sand.

"It's Gallifryan lab-issue. Look at the logo on the bottom." The Doctor pointed to the metallic base of the compass.

"Looks like rust to me." Rose muttered.

The Doctor took the compass from her, and squinted at it. He hadn't bothered bringing his glasses all those days ago, figuring tobogganing wouldn't require him to read any fine print. "This isn't that old. It must have only been here a hundred years."

"So what? Odjya's probably been here that long." Rose said. She wanted to get this whole compass conversation over with. She was sure the Doctor was just stalling whatever he'd been about to tell her.

"She's been here a thousand years. So," the Doctor glanced up at Rose. "I don't think this hers."

Rose considered this. It made sense. Odjya hadn't mentioned anything about manufacturing compasses - hell, she had even gone to earth for axes - so where would she get a compass?

"This is a hundred years old." The Doctor said. His voice rose an octave. "And Odjya had been here a thousand. She can't have got it from Gallifrey, and yet it's Gallifryan. Rose, do you know what that means?"

Rose gave up, and admitted to herself that whatever the Doctor had been about to say, she was going to have to wait to hear. Bleeding hell.

"I have no bloody idea." She sighed.

"It means," the Doctor leaned closer to her, until his unruly fringe brushed her forehead, "That there are other Gallifryans here."

"And they didn't invite Odjya to stay with them. Imagine that." Rose smirked.

The Doctor didn't appear to hear her. "They aren't gone."

No more genocide.

"Hey, you might want to think about this-" Rose said, as the meaning of his words dawned on her.

It was too late. The Doctor was on his feet and running in the direction of camp.

"Odjya!" he shouted. The excitement was clear in his voice.

Rose sighed. "Bleeding hell."

xxx xxx

_Thanks again for waiting. Please reveiw! I feel so terribly, terribly cold when no one reveiws. ; )  
More chapters - hopefully all of them!- this weekend. I'll be back in town then, and the computer will be mine. My cousin kicked me off it last weekend. Dang him. Dang him to heck!_

_Eek! Last episode of Doctor Who? What are we going watch after?_


	17. Marmalade

_A/N: THis should answer some questions. Lot's of questions! Three more chapters to go.  
Oh man, Doctor Who last night...cry. P-p-poor R-r-r-ose! Sob. How awful!_

xxx xxx

"It's certainly Gallifryan."

Rose dragged herself to the top of the sand dune just in time for Odjya to glare at her. The time lords were close, shoulders touching, inspecting the rusted compass.

"You, girl." Odjya snapped, "Why didn't you show me this before?"

"Maybe I would have if you weren't such a bloomin' cow about everything." Rose muttered, just loud enough for the other woman to hear.

"Trust a silly little monkey to hold such a petty little grudge." Odjya sneered. She held Rose's gaze for a second longer before rolling her eyes and turning back to the object in question.

The Doctor wasn't paying attention to either of them. "They could be alive, Rose. Others, just like us." He looked at Odjya and laughed, "Our people! Living outside the paradox!"

"Don't get too excited." The time lady cautioned, "We haven't found them yet. In a thousand years, I've never seen any sign of Gallifryans still living on Beta. And even if they are here, we have no idea of where to even _begin_ looking for them."

Rose wandered closer to them. She peered at the compass, held firmly in the Doctor's outstretched hand. Even now that she knew its origins, the worn device didn't seem overly impressive. Wow, a compass. Apparently no different in any way, shape or function to an earth compass.

"What's it do that's so special, then?" she queried, "Tell you which way north was a million years ago? Spin the planet so you're always going in the right direction?"

"Oh, nothing like that. It's just an ordinary circumnavigation device." The Doctor gave Rose an anxious smile. "Human have these, don't they? Surely you know what a compass does. The needle points in the direction of the strongest magnetic field, then you simply-"

"I know what a compass does." Rose rolled her eyes. Honestly, you'd think she'd been born in the stone age, from the way he treated her.

Odjya frowned at the girl. "Then there was no need to ask. Do you do nothing useful?"

Rose was about to protest when the Doctor interrupted.

"Rose is extremely useful. But let's get back to the compass. Living Gallifryans! There has to be some way to find them. As a wise man once said, you can't tread upon the face of the world without leaving so much as a footprint."

"You said that." Rose pointed out.

"Well, I did say a wise man." The Doctor grinned. "And I am a genius."

"_Self-claimed_ genius." She teased.

The Doctor scratched his jaw self-consciously. "It doesn't make it any less true. Besides, I have an idea."

He stepped around Rose, and started off down the dunes. The dragon trail glistened amber in the early dawn light.

"Wait!" Odjya called, trailing after him. "What's your idea?"

Grinning, the Doctor glanced at her over his shoulder. "I'll tell you. You better pack up camp first, though. Catch up with me after."

"Oh no you don't." Rose growled. She took off after him at a run.

Odjya stared at the pair dumbly for a moment, before shaking her head angrily. Fine. She would pack their things. She would carry it all. She assumed that they would now be embarking on a wild goose chase to try and salvage their brother remnants, which annoyed her. Odjya knew nothing as soft and archaic as the average time lord could survive on Beta. It took a different mind, a cold mind, with a calculating brain-

"Oddy! You better hurry up! Don't want to be left behind!" Rose shouted.

She turned to the Doctor, giggling. The pair had already reached the dragon trail, and a quick glance back told Rose that Odjya hadn't done much but glare at their retreating backs.

"Oddy." The Doctor snorted. "Where'd you come up with that?"

Rose giggled again. "She's got such an awful name. Aren't all your lot s'posed to have named like Pythagoras and the Master and e equals m squared?"

"Generally speaking, yeah. Though sometimes girls have nicer names." The Doctor smiled happily, probably reminiscing about some long-lost high school crush.

"Like Odd-jar? It's horrible. Sounds like something you'd scrape off the bottom of your foot."

The two of them laughed as they walked along. Neither bothered to look back, to where Odjya was loaded up with three travel packs and three sleeping skins, plus her axes and a handful of other supplies.

"What's your big idea, anyway? Are we going to look for your people?" Rose wondered, once she'd expended her stock of jokes ridiculing the time lady.

"Yep." The Doctor looked down at her. "As long as it's alright with you, of course."

Rose almost burst out laughing. Like she could possibly stop the Doctor from doing something he wanted to. "Go ahead," she said, trying to mask a grin, "Make my day."

They didn't speak again until ten minutes later, when Odjya finally caught up with them. The time lady was huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, bent over double under the load she carried.

"Are you out of breath?" Rose asked, as innocently as she could.

Odjya, too winded to speak, glared at her.

"You're right to carry those a little further, aren't you?" the Doctor wondered, falling into step beside Odjya, "It's just that I don't want to be out of breath while I'm explaining my idea to you."

He gave her a look, a mixture of pleading and good-humour. Odjya sighed audibly, and hung her head in silent agreement.

"Capital work." The Doctor slapped her on the back, probably intending to demonstrate his good will, but only succeeding in pitching the time lady face-first into the sand. "Help her up, will you Rose?" he said, not so much as breaking stride.

"Pain in the arse." Rose murmured. She stopped, and turned back to help Odjya.

Seeing as there was little chance of her ever being dragged to her feet under the weight of the bags, Rose hefted two of the travel packs from Odjya's back, and slung them over her shoulder.

"I don't need your help." Odjya spat, when Rose offered her a hand up.

Rose glared at her. A tiny pulse twitched in her neck.

"Fine." She said at last, and dumped both travel packs onto the sand, inches from Odjya's face. "Don't expect it, either."

"Is there something going on between you two?" the Doctor asked, when Rose caught up to him once again.

"What do you mean? Of course there's nothing going on. Odd-jar and me, we're like this." Rose held up her hand, index and middle finger crossed.

The Doctor slung an arm around her shoulders, but said nothing. They walked on, not speaking, not looking back. They were still following the dragon trail, so Rose assumed they were heading away from Gymnophiona. She tried to judge whether this was true by picking out a familiar feature in the landscape, but there were none. Nothing but sand, sand, sand.

Dawn was in full swing by time Odjya struggled alongside them.

"Thought we'd lost you there for a while." The Doctor said, smiling amiably.

"Not so lucky." Odjya panted. She was sweating heavily, and for a split second, Rose almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

"Well, good. Now that there are no more delays," the Doctor glared at both women, who stared back blandly, "I'll tell you my idea."

He waited a full minute for something to interrupt. There was nothing as annoying as getting to the mid-point of a speech, only to have the earth erupt around you, or be invaded, or have a random member of the audience announce that they were the sabotagee.

When nothing happened, he coughed to hide his embarrassment, and said; "The compass in lab-issue. The duel-headed minotaur logo on the base proves that."

Rose rolled her eyes again. Duel-headed minotaur her ass.

"There was laboratories on Beta, once. I thought they'd all been erased." The Doctor glanced sideways at Odjya. "But obviously not. Whoever owned this compass visited one of the labs. Think about it. These deep-space exploration labs are equipped with everything a group of Gallifryans would need to survive on for months, even years. Food, power, weaponry."

"You think they're still there." Rose said, "Still in the labs."

The Doctor nodded. "It's a dangerous planet. Desert worms, Slitheen, Sycorax. The labs would be built strong, to survive the harsh conditions. Tiny fortresses of civilisation, spread all around Beta. Existing outside the paradox, unreachable even to the Daleks."

Odjya stopped. She dropped the packs and sleeping skins on the ground, making enough noise that the Doctor paused to stare at her.

"Beta doesn't exist outside the paradox, it exists before it." She panted, using the back of her hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead. "From what the Wartime Council could determine, Beta is one of a handful of planets that could be the Daleks home world."

"Could be?" Rose queried, "You mean you don't know?"

Odjya leered. "Of course not. Why would the Daleks allow us to know where they originated from? We would have instantly destroyed that world, and wiped them out."

"If it's only out of a handful of planets, why didn't you just destroy them all?" Rose wondered, then looked up guiltily at the Doctor. He didn't look impressed at her question.

"At first, we were going to." Odjya told her. "But then we realised something. We don't really know where the Daleks originated from, and there's no way to be sure. So what makes us so sure that we evolved on Gallifrey? By destroying that handful of planets, we could have wiped out the bacterium that birthed our race."

Ew, thought Rose. Bacterium.

"Don't look like that." The Doctor laughed, noting Rose's expression. "Humans evolved the same way. You know the theory, don't you? A rock from Mars hit Earth and the Martian bacteria provided the basis for all life on the planet."

"Yeah, but…" Rose trailed. Ew, bacterium.

"So you see our dilemma." Said Odjya, "The purpose of having laboratories on Beta is to determine whether or not it is in fact the Daleks home world. Or even if it is our own. Perhaps the time lords were spawned from a meteorite that came off Beta. Who knows? This far in the past, it's hard to do anything and realise the repercussions."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at this. "Like kidnapping a handful of primitive aliens and dumping them here, in the hope that they'll grow up big and strong and wipe out the Daleks?" his tone was cynical, "What's stopping them from wiping us out? What makes you think they'll break through the paradox at all?"

Odjya shrugged. The gesture seemed strange to Rose, almost as if the time lady didn't care one way or the other. Surely, wiping out the Daleks was the entire point…

"I'll make sure they break through. I have an entire life to devote to this, Doctor. Nothing will stop me, nothing at all."

And with that, Odjya plucked her travel pack from the desert floor, and stalked away.

xxx

A day and a half later, the argument persisted.

Who was right, who was wrong, who knew what would happen? Good questions that no one could answer.

"Can we stop for the night?" Rose asked, staring up at the starry sky and feeling a familiar pang of homesickness.

The Doctor and Odjya were both ahead of her, once again shoulder to shoulder in some private conversation. Rose didn't mind, she really didn't, but it made her feel terribly lonely. She longed for the company of Mickey, of Jack, or even her mother. Anyone, really. Nothing would have been more appreciated than a human presence. For the past twenty four hours the Doctor had been unbearably alien.

It had never occurred to Rose just how different the Gallifryans were. Various creatures she'd met had referred to them as pompous, arrogant, ancient. And from what she could hear from the frequent, hushes conversations that never included her, that's exactly what the time lords were.

"What, already?" the Doctor glanced back at Rose.

"It's almost midnight." She pointed at the moon, high in the sky. "We've been walking all day."

"She's right, Doctor, we ought to stop. Let the human rest." Odjya said with a haughty sigh.

Rose was too tired to even roll her eyes. She sunk to the ground, closing her eyes for a few moments before shrugging out of her travel pack.

"Goodnight." She muttered, and flopping back on the sand.

The geography of the desert had changed. The wide, high plateaus, filled with rolling sand dunes had given way to mountains of sand and pebbles. This made walking during morning and evening easier, huge dark shadows thrown off by the mountains cooled the weaving gullies and valleys.

Midday, though, was as hot as ever. At Rose's insistence they stopped, finding whatever shade they could, to wait out the scalding sun. She wasn't sure how much relief it really offered, however; even though the desert air was a boiling forty degrees Celsius, at ground level it was twenty degrees warmer.

The Doctor dumped his pack to the ground, and sat on it. Even at night, the desert floor scorched.

"Is she sleeping yet?" Odjya wondered, watching Rose.

The time lady stood behind the Doctor. She was obviously impatient, constantly shifting her weight from one foot to the other, crossing her arms, uncrossing them, tucking a stray dreadlock behind her sunburnt ears.

"Not yet." The Doctor replied. His voice was cool, but his eyes were warm when Odjya couldn't see them. Rose, Rose, beautiful Rose. He almost wished that, despite the awesome discovery of another of his own kind, that he and Rose had never come to Beta.

Or that maybe, he'd never found that book…

"Leave her anyway. We have things to discuss." Odjya said.

The Doctor frowned at her. "Wait."

A minute later, Rose was asleep. She was snoring softly, the only sound of life in the remorseless desert. The two time lords were like statues, never moving in the slightest, even to blink or breath.

"Now we can go." The Doctor said at last.

Silently, Odjya picked a trail through the dunes, to a shallow oasis half a mile away. Rather more clumsily, and a good deal more noisily, the Doctor followed.

"Your human mentioned that the Daleks refer to you as the Oncoming Storm." Odjya said, grinning slyly, "I would have never imagined it was because you were as noisy as one."

The Doctor didn't reply. His mind was what he'd seen earlier on that day. He should have told Rose, he really should have. It was just… he was so ashamed. This trip was turning out to be a disaster. He never would have imagined his people would do such a thing, and yet…

"Try not to dwell on it." Odjya said. She intended for her voice to be soothing, but it the sentiment came out as harsh and snappish as ever. "We have other things to talk about."

This caught the Doctor's attention.

"Like what?" he wondered.

He was standing ankle-deep in the cool oasis water, pants rolled up to his knees, shirt undone to the waist. His shoes, socks, jacket and tie were long gone, strewn across two hundred miles of desert.

Secretly, he had never felt so alone as he did right then. Alarm bells were ringing in his heads, though he wasn't sure why. There were decisions to be made, and not all of them were his.

"Like this journey." Odjya replied. "Do you really expect us to find any living Gallifryans?"

No. Not anymore.

"We can't just give up on them, Odjya." The Doctor told her, but his voice lacked conviction. "They could be there. We have to look."

Odjya smiled. "They're all dead, you know."

No.

"We don't know that. There could be someone-"

"They died a hundred years ago. We're too late." The time lady sighed, and the smile faded from her face. "I had hope too, you know. Once. But this proves it. You and I are the last of our kind, on the last refuge planet I ever had hope in."

Beta was forbidden for a reason.

"You don't know…" the Doctor paused, swallowed hard. He ought to be listening to Odjya, because she was right. There was no one else left, not even on Beta. This was the bomb shelter, this was the forgotten island. And there was no one here. No one else had survived.

"Our own idiocy had killed us." Odjya's soft, raspy voice drew the Doctor from his reverie. "Trying to destroy the Daleks a million years before they were existed. We were fools."

The Doctor's hand dropped to his side. His fingers rubbed the smooth surface of a hard, cool ball.

Odjya gave a barking laugh. "Good thing your monkey didn't find these. She does put her nose out of joint sometimes."

Hours early, while Rose slept at high noon, the two Gallifryans had gone for a stroll. Thirty miles separated them and the sea, where Odjya guessed the laboratory to be. In fact, when he shielded his eyes from the blazing sun, and squinted against the glare, the Doctor could almost make out the glittering dome so popular amongst time lords-

And then they'd found the eggs.

Some were cracked, others looked to have hatched. It was just an abandon nest, resting peacefully atop a pebble mountain. The nest itself was simple, a sort of crater scooped out of the rocks, close to four feet across.

"Hullo." The Doctor had said, "What's there on Beta that lays eggs in the desert?"

The answer was nothing, because the only flourishing organisms on Beta were amphibian, and all laid their eggs in water.

"They're the Desert Worms. Genetically modified eggs, if I'm not mistaken." Odjya had told him, and then ducked down to picked up one unharmed egg.

For a minute, the Doctor had been unable to tear his eyes off her. His mind buzzed, wondering if he'd misheard.

"We didn't." he had protested, shaking his head. Trying to clear his brain.

"We did." Odjya had been smiling by that stage. "As I'm sure you already know, in a few thousand years, there will be a catastrophe on Beta. All life on the planet will be extinguished. That's why all previous attempts to destroy the Daleks early on were unsuccessful."

If you have a pest, introduce a predator.

"I know."

The Doctor felt a pain in his chest that he couldn't quite explain. Odjya had healed him, so it wasn't anything physical. But God, it felt like someone had just ripped out his still-beating heart.

"Then by any chance, do you know what the catastrophe will be?" the time lady had looked curious, as if she actually didn't know. "As far as I can tell, we were never sure of what happened."

Could have been anything. The Doctor hadn't given her an answer. There had been something, something shiny and white, half buried amongst the eggs.

"What's this?" he'd wondered, crouching down to retrieve it.

One hard tug jerked the object free from the sand, and both Gallifryans had stared at it for minutes in disbelief.

"It's an arm." Odjya had managed to say. Her eyes were wide, mouth slack.

Half an hours searching under the boiling sun had found other bones, all human. Well, human enough. The Doctor had sniffed the arm bone carefully, and determined it was Gallifryan.

Hard to tell over the stench of rotting black flesh, but it had to be Gallifryan.

"You're thinking of this afternoon." Odjya said.

Her voice dragged the Doctor back to reality. He wiped his eyes furiously with his hand. That poor bastard, chewed apart by worms his own people had created, dead out there in the desert.

"You couldn't have done anything, Doctor. So don't think about it."

Odjya was very close to him now. Small black waves, stirred by a gentle breeze, lapped at their ankles. The few stunted shrubs shimmied in the wind.

"I could have done something. This should never have happened. The time war, the Daleks, Beta. None of this should've happened!" his voice was very loud in the night air.

Even the wind seemed stunned for a moment, and everything was still before life breathed back in.

"Let me take your mind off it."

Odjya took a step closer, so that she was pressed against him. Her wiry arms slipped around his neck, forcing him down to meet her mouth.

"Wait!" the Doctor protested, but by then it was too late. Odjya's mouth was on his, and her stench of wet animal filled his head.

She held him there for a second, her teeth cutting into his lip, fingers almost dragging the flesh from his neck.

"Odjya, stop!" he shouted. His voice was muffled, and she wasn't listening at any rate.

Her hands dropped from around his neck and she latched on instead to his shirt, wrenching the tails from his pants. Feeling him pulling away, the time lady snaked one arm around his waist, pressing against the small of his back, while the other hand fumbled with his belt buckle.

"Stop it!"

"What's going on here?"

The Doctor could have sworn Rose's voice was the loudest he'd ever heard, yet he was sure she was whispering. He tore his eyes off Odjya, grabbed her wrists and jerked her hands off him.

"Doctor, what…?"

Rose was standing right there, at the edge of the oasis. Her eyes were huge and drowning black, her hair white in the moon light.

"It's not what it looks like. Rose!"

Too late. The girl was already running. She must have heard them go. Perhaps she hadn't been asleep at all.

"What do you think you're doing!" the Doctor bristled, turning on Odjya.

The time lady had the decency to look meek. "For our people-"

"You said it yourself! Our people are dead!"

The Doctor gave her one last withering glare, then spun on his heel, and ran.

"Rose!"

xxx xxx

_Man, that Odjya is a bi-atch. I can hardly believe I made her up!  
Update should be Thursday. Stupid work at the stupid abbatoir. Grumble grumble._


	18. Last Living Souls

_**A/N:** Alright, firstly, I have to apologise for the use of the word 'sabotagee' in the last chapter. I did mean saboteur, and I can only asssume that the terrible grammatical error that I made is an Australian thing. Anyone who watched the NRL final a few weeks ago might have noticed one commentator ( I won't mention any names) use the word "Winniest". As in, Melbourne Storm is one of the most winniest teams in the league. So, sorry._

_Also, thanks to everyone who reviewed. I love you, man. ;)_

xxx xxx

"Rose!"

Where the hell had she got to?

He knew she moved better on the sand than he did, but this was ridiculous.

"Rose! Stop!"

Wait! There was something moving to his right. Darting in and out of the dunes, moonlight bouncing from smooth blonde hair-

"Rose, Rose! Stop, Rose!"

The Doctor hooked right and scrambled down the dune. By time he reached the bottom, slipping and sliding to a halt on his knees, Rose was far ahead of him again. Not looking back.

_When I catch you, Rose Tyler._

His own words haunted him. The Doctor hadn't caught Rose a week ago on the icy slopes of Ilium Neocort. What made him think he would catch her on the ergs of the Betian desert?

"Well, sitting around here certainly won't get me anywhere." The Doctor scolded himself.

He climbed to his feet, brushed the clinging white sand from his pants. There were holes in both knees from his numerous trips and falls. His belt was gone thanks to Odjya, so the lip of his pants clung desperately to his lean hips. It was high school fashion all over again.

"I _will _catch you, Rose Tyler." He said, staring off into the darkness for a moment.

And he ran.

Not far away, though well out of reach, Rose was slowing down.

Her breath was fire in her throat. Her head pounded, and there was the sharp sting of tears behind her eyes.

"That bitch." She muttered, taking a few last stumbling stops before she stopped entirely.

There was a pain in her chest that she couldn't quite put a finger to. Rose ground her teeth together, trying hard not to cry. It was his choice, after all. However wrong he was.

"That bitch," she said again, "That bloody witch."

Rose slumped to her knees. All that maddening energy that had possessed her minutes earlier seemed to have evaporated.

He didn't know. He couldn't have known. But no. Of course he knew.

"He's not like that!" Rose cried, driving her hands hard through her hair.

She tried to think, tried to remember the scene exactly. Maybe she had just mistaken some innocent gesture as…

As what? There was no mistake about it. Odjya and the Doctor, the two had clearly been enjoying a moment together. _Really _enjoying it.

"No, no, no," Rose wrenched her hands clear from her hair, and pressed the heel of her palms against her closed eyes, "He wouldn't. He couldn't."

But the more she thought about it, the less reasons she could think of why he wouldn't. He and Odjya were the last of their kind. Rose herself knew how lonely he was, behind the grinning, blushing, feigning annoyance.

Just one man, alone in all the universe.

"I was there." Rose whimpered, "You always had me."

xxx

"Idiot."

Odjya stared after the Doctor. For a long while after he had disappeared from view, she kept her eyes on the spot she'd last seen him. Her expression was fond, as if she could still see him.

"Chasing after his pet ape."

The time lady shook herself, and all warm emotion in her expression was sucked back into the void of her being. She could still taste the Doctor's mouth on hers. Hot and honey sweet, as though he kept that entire library of his knowledge on the tip of his tongue.

He did taste good, she had to admit. Damn that stupid monkey for ruining things.

Odjya sighed. She supposed it didn't particularly matter; the Doctor had always been a gamble. A nice prize, but not essential to the plan. Not essential to the future.

"At last, you've answered my question." she said softly. "And the answer is no."

The question remained an object of debate. There had always been a question between them, since the first night of their meeting.

Odjya supposed the question was if their meeting would really change anything either of them would have done had they not met.

The Doctor had chased his monkey. Odjya had her project in its final stage.

"No." she said, "It really didn't matter."

Her eyes clouded over as she continued to stare. The slightest wisp of a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth.

It was time to go. There were things to be done.

"Goodbye, Doctor. I do hope you find what you're searching for."

With those last words, Odjya turned. Very deliberately, she put the glittering black ocean, still twenty miles distant, to her back.

She had only been walking for a minute when the ground trembled beneath her.

Odjya's hand dropped to her belt, groping for a weapon. There were none. She cursed silently, remembering she'd left both axes back at that night's camp. The Doctor had insisted she leave Rose something to defend herself with.

"Damn."

Sand fountained up around her. The ground buckled, throwing Odjya off her feet.

With a shriek of grinding metal, a giant wedge head rose above her.

Odjya screamed.

xxx

"Rose? Are you alright?"

Rose was still trying to sort her thoughts out when she heard the softly spoken words.

"Huh?"

She glanced up to see the Doctor standing over her. For the first moment while they stared at each other, his expression was a mix of concern and anxiety. Then the moment passed and he broke into a broad grin, showing off all of his thirty thousand white teeth.

"I knew I'd find you." He said with a laugh.

Rose merely nodded. She didn't trust herself to speak without screaming.

That bitch. That bitch!

"What you saw before…" the Doctor gulped, and flicked his gaze off Rose, to some spot far in the distance. "It wasn't like you think. Odjya just… you know what's she's like."

When Rose didn't respond to this, he continued. His voice faltered a few times before tuning into full ramble mode.

"I went with her because she said we had things to discuss. But, you know, I don't think that's what she wanted at all. And I, uh, I know, um, you know. I know her and I are, uh, the same. Male and female. Well, I'm male, and she's female. But we're both time lords." The Doctor gave Rose a pleading look, "I think she thought I would want to uh, with her."

"Did you?"

The Doctor took a big step back away from her. His expression was wild, and Rose wondered for a moment if she'd accidentally announced she was considering becoming the new Dalek emperor instead of asking an obvious question.

"Did I um, what?" the Doctor queried. As discreetly as he could, he pulled his pants back up to the level of his hips.

Rose looked at him over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. She didn't bother repeating the question, and settled on a more tactful approach to obtaining answers. "Where is she, anyway?"

"Who? Odjya?" the Doctor was blushing furiously.

Now he had Rose back, safe and sound, he didn't know what to do with her. Obviously she had to find out about the desert worms. And certainly he would have to tell her the probable fate of Beta's Gallifryans.

"Who else?" Rose snapped. She was on her last nerve, and even that was twitching.

Here, in the bloody desert on a bloody deserted bloody planet in the middle of bloody nowhere, stuck with bloody time bloody lords. Who didn't even have the bloody decency to give her a bloody straight bloody answer!

"She's uh, um. I don't know, actually. Obviously she didn't follow me."

Obviously not.

"Well I'm fine here." Rose said, trying hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice, "Maybe you should go and look for her."

"She- she'll- she'll be alright. I am sorry, Rose. I didn't mean for that to happen. And I certainly didn't mean for you to walk in on anything." The Doctor cringed when he realised what he'd said. He spoke quickly to try and make up for it. "Mostly I didn't mean for it to happen, though. We were just talking, and next thing I know. Bam. You know how these things are."

"Yeah."

Spontaneous decisions often turned out that way. Like the decision of a teenage girl to accompany a centuries old time lord on his misadventures across the galaxy. Gee, that was going well.

"She said she could have children."

The Doctor looked horrified at his own words. He stared at Rose like a deer caught in the headlights, with much the same expression as a man about to become witness to an unspeakable accident.

Except in this case, he had the sinking feeling that the unspeakable accident was about to happen to him.

There was a pause where the earth itself held its breath, then Rose spoke.

"Can she?"

_So can I_. Some awesome emotion was boiling inside her, born of days of being rejected and ridiculed and shoved aside. Rose felt her skin would blister from the force of that internal heat.

"Er, yes." The Doctor shifted uncomfortably, "At least, that's what she says. I don't know if it's true. At any rate, it's not important."

Rose uttered a snorting grunt, and rose to her feet. Her expression was unreadable, blank, emotionless, but the Doctor thought he could see the faintest of quivers at her hands…

"Not important."

He startled at her words. For an instant, his eyes locked on hers, then he tore his gaze away.

"No."

"Why wouldn't it be important? You two could be the last two," Rose made an expansive gesture. The tremble in her hands was obvious now. "Time lords in the entire universe! Anywhere, anytime, and you're the last!"

"I'm not ready to settle down yet." The Doctor joked, hoping to break the tension.

"Yeah? What about in a million years, when you're done travelling? I won't be there, then. I'll be long gone. You'll have had a thousand other girls since me. What then?"

"There won't be thousand other girls."

Rose snorted. "You won't even remember my name!"

_That utter bitch!_

The Doctor took a step towards her. His thoughts of Odjya at that moment were following much the same path as Rose's. That wicked little witch had set him up, he was sure.

"Don't do this, Rose." He pleaded, reaching out for her hand. She jerked away from him, and stood a step away, fuming. "I don't love her. I don't even like her. There's no way I would ever want to spend eternity with her."

Rose had a moment where she wondered what it would be like to live forever, or close enough to forever that it made little difference. Probably it wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

"Then I'll make things easy for you." She said, silently cursing her voice for faltering as she spoke, "Good bye."

"Rose, no. I love you."

There. He said it. Hope she listened, 'cause he was all out of cards after that.

"You'll get over it."

With that, she turned, and walked away from him.

For minutes he was too stunned to go after her. And when he finally roused himself into action, she was gone.

xxx

Rose wandered around for a long time before she decided where to go.

There wasn't really many options open to her. Either she could get her ass into gear and get back to the TARDIS before the Doctor did, and leave him stranded with Odjya. Or she could take her time and head off to Ilium Neocort, to live a life of mud and moths with the Rax.

Since neither of those options seemed particularly attractive, Rose racked her brain and came up with a third destination.

The Gallifryan lab. According to Odjya, it would be close to the ocean. Something about the beach being a good spot for monitoring currents and therefore global weather patterns. Why time lords would care about global weather patterns was a mystery to Rose. It wasn't as if a strong southerly gust one summer's day would cause a time war six million years later. But whatever.

"Maybe there's people there." Rose told herself.

Although of course any people there would be Gallifryans, and most likely think she was some sort of trained monkey. That considered, her main reason for making a course for the lab was simple; time lords meant time machines. And if she had a TARDIS of her own, Rose could get back to earth without the Doctor. Because if she didn't see the Doctor, she wouldn't be tempted to beg him to take her back. Because it was for the best, for both of them.

"Yeah, right."

Armed nothing more than a canteen of stale water, Rose continued on towards the ocean.

Dawn blossomed around her.

xxx

The last vestiges of night etched deep shadows on a solitary figure, hopelessly lost in a sea of sand.

"Am I the last living soul?" the lonely demanded of the world in general, "Am I the last living soul?" there was a hint of a tune in his voice, "Am I the last living soul?"

Since he didn't know the rest of the song, the Doctor stopped singing. The nagging feeling of total dejection soon crept into him again, so he tried to cheer himself by naming all the stars in the sky without looking at them.

He gave up after a few minutes, and glanced up.

"Osirius Ten, of course." He groaned, slapping a hand to his forehead, "The Dakura satellite."

The Doctor stared up at the fading stars for a minute longer, figuring it was safe enough. What was there in the desert for him to trip over?

"Miroki, Aurillioli, Jsrpi, Ki-"

He gave a short yelp as the ground rolled away from beneath him. After a moment of flailing to keep his balance, the Doctor toppled over backwards and crashed to the desert floor.

"Bloody hell," he muttered, sitting up and rubbing his head, "Anyone would think I'd been drinking."

Which he planned to do excessively when he found Rose and got back to the TARDIS. But never mind that now.

"Hullo. What's this?"

A half yard away, covered in sand, there lay a short, brownish object. Curious, the Doctor plucked it up out of the sand.

Warm liquid seeped out of the broader end of the thing, and oozed between his fingers. The Doctor frowned, his eyes working slowly down the object. It wasn't offensive in appearance, and not particularly to touch, just warm and resilient. But the smell… the smell was both sweet and sour, like bad breath and wet animal and… blood.

"Cripes!" the Doctor dropped the object, and wrung his hand like he'd been burnt.

He stared at his hand for a moment before risking a glance at forsaken appendage. An arm, cut off at the elbow. The Doctor felt a wave of nausea rise in his stomach.

"It can't be." He moaned, staring at the severed arm, "Not her."

But who else? The arm was slim, the wiry muscles slack in death. The hand was mottled with old battle scars and fresh wounds. Palms were still dripping blood from deep black wounds that looked like serrated bite marks. The dirty smudge his foot had left was obvious even in the poor light.

"Odjya." The Doctor sighed.

He glanced around for any other bits and pieces that might belong to the time lady. There was nothing, just a few small, dark stains. A ring of churned up sand. And an arm.

"I hope you don't regenerate inside one of those worms." The Doctor said to the arm.

He dug a narrow trench, and gingerly placed the arm inside. By time he'd covered it over with sand, his face was flushed with unspoken emotions. Anger, at her, at himself. Grief, for the entire wasted opportunity, for that last tiny piece of optimism he'd ever clung to for the survival of his race.

But mostly, more than anything else, he was relieved. So easily could the arm he found have belonged to Rose. It could have been her that he buried that morning.

Then again, he didn't know where Rose was, either. Hours had passed since she left him standing there, staring dumbly after her. If Odjya was dead, there was no real reason to believe that Rose wasn't as well.

"Not Rose."

The thought filled him. Rose could be dead, because he'd been stupid and selfish and let her walk away.

And even if the worms didn't get her, where would she go? He'd already stumbled across the camp, and nothing had been taken. Without food, without a weapon, how long could Rose expect to survive in the desert?

A few days maybe, if the worms didn't get her first. Not long enough for her to get back to Gymnophiona. Surely Rose knew that.

"She wouldn't have gone there anyway." The Doctor told himself. "Either she's wandering around in circles like I am, or she's going somewhere close by."

The only place he could think of that she might go was the ocean lab. What on Beta that would possess her to go there, he didn't know. There was nothing there, after all. Nothing except failed genetic experiments, and a few gnawed bones.

"Well, hopefully the experiments failed." The Doctor said aloud.

A second later, he was on his feet and running. Twenty miles away, the ocean glistened gold in the dawn light.

"Rose!"

xxx

"Bloody worms." Odjya groaned.

She rubbed the stump of her arm, wondering vaguely if it would grow back. She was on her last regeneration now, since being attacked by dozens of ravenous larvae worms months back.

Being on her last regeneration meant that she healed small things much easier, but the big things took a while. It was possible her arm wouldn't have regrown by time she reached Gymnophiona.

"Annoying," she sighed, "But not important."

After all, it didn't really matter how many eggs she carried. A bagful in one hand, another bagful over her shoulder. It would be the same as if she had both arms. And after that, nothing would matter. The project would be complete.

In the beginning, she never would have guessed that it would have taken a thousand years. And it wouldn't have, if her TARDIS hadn't been lost forever to the sucking mud of Lake Ilium Neocort. It was almost funny, how a bad job parking had cost her a thousand years, and eleven regenerations.

Odjya almost laughed.

Not long now.

xxx

Once, when Rose was small, she had accompanied Jackie on a camping trip. The trip was planned as a surprise for Jackie's then-boyfriend, an outdoorsy sort whom Rose remembered always wearing a swagman's hat and smoking rollies.

Half way to their destination, Tom (was that his name?) had said that he thought there was a 'weird' sound coming from the engine of the battered '70 Ford Thunderbird. Sure enough, ten minutes later the Thunderbird gave a weak cough and rolled to a stop.

Without the privilege of mobile phones, and with nothing so much as a farm house nearby, the three would-be campers had trekked the fifteen miles back to the nearest fuel station.

That fifteen miles had seemed like a thousand to Rose, and even in the pleasant English spring, it had been hot work.

Ten years and a million miles later, Rose was feeling much the same she had that day. Except that the trip was longer this time, made longer still by the ups and downs of rolling desert dunes, and incredibly hot.

"Wish I was back in the bloody snow." Rose grumbled, shoulders hunched, trudging.

Thanks to the relative coolness of the dragon trail, she walked barefoot. Her shoes, laced tied together, were slung over her shoulder. They slapped against her back and hip as she walked, steadily driving her crazy.

At high noon she stopped to rest. What precious little water she carried with her was fast running out. The ocean looked to be no more than five miles away, ten at the most.

God it was hot.

Rose nestled further into the deep shade of a tall dune, digging her toes into the wet dragon trail sand. She was comfortable, lying there in the sand.

All day she had managed not to think of the Doctor. But right then, with nothing to take her mind off him, Rose felt herself missing him acutely. She wondered if she would ever him again. Probably not, if Odjya had anything to say about it.

As the heat lulled her into a shallow sleep, Rose could think of nothing but the Doctor.

She even thought she saw him standing over her.

xxx xxx

_Does anybody understand this story? No? Nevermind._

_Only two chapters left. Gasp. So close!  
Also, does anyone know where I can get a poster of David Tennant naked? Or is that just creepy? Heh heh heh._


	19. Hellfire

_**A/N: **I hope this chapter is alright. Sorry if it's not. It's certainly long. Eek. Hope you like it!_

xxx xxx

That day, the Doctor dreamed.

A city burned. Stone buildings smouldered, skyscrapers were hundred metre high pillars of roaring fire. Still more were just charred black skeletons, threatening to topple in the evening breeze.

The sky was a noxious nicotine yellow, seething with writhing orange smoke plumes.

Somewhere deep in his head, the Doctor knew that the ground his feet trod was sand. But when he looked down to confirm this, he saw not sand but a city sidewalk, littered with debris and the dead.

His city burned.

His head was filled with the screams of the warheads, banshee howling from the yellow sky, dropping all around him. Mortar bombs exploded before and beside him, chipping away at his flesh, but he walked on.

No one was alive. This was the twenty-first hour of the final battle for Gallifrey, and those last few souls who dared defend it were long since dead.

The Daleks had holed them in like rats; a wall of fire, mortar and electron bombs lined the city boundaries. The dark shadow of a time-space neutraliser hovered high over the city centre, rendering all TARDIS's useless.

And with no escape, and no way to defend themselves, his people died.

It wasn't the last battle.

It was just the one he remembered.

The Doctor made his way up a hill near Gallifrey's utmost boundary. He paused to watch the dying city.

Most of the buildings had fallen by then. The scream of the warheads was dwindling, as the Daleks realised that there was nothing lest for them to destroy.

The Doctor took one last look at the rubble, mountains of ash and twisted metal frames, high piles of collapsed stone, arms and legs and torsos littered everywhere. All of it burning.

"My home." He said.

Then the image wavered, and he found himself back in the desert. Unharmed.

There was still along way to go before the ocean.

xxx

"Don't tell me you're dead, too."

Rose awoke with a start.

"Bleedin' hell!" she yelped, flattening herself against the sand dune.

His face mere inches from hers, the Doctor grinned. Despite his cheery demeanour, the dark smudges under his eyes told Rose he was exhausted.

"I thought you might be heading this way," the Doctor said, standing. He offered a hand-up to Rose, "Do you want a drink?"

"Not right now." Rose refused the proffered hand with a shake of her head, and climbed warily to her feet. She craned her neck to see behind the Doctor.

"Odjya's dead," he said, noting Rose's suspicious expression, "Don't bother looking for her."

Rose stared at him dumbly for a minute until his words sunk in. Odjya was dead?

"W-what happened?" she stammered, wondering if it was too soon to punch the air in triumph. "When?"

The Doctor gave a short, harsh laugh. His expression was bitter, unlike any Rose had seen him wear before. "A desert worm ripped her apart. All I found of her was an arm."

"But I- I just saw her. Just hours ago." Rose chewed her lip. Definitely too soon for a victory dance. "Just hours- she was… she was so alive."

In truth, Odjya was the last person Rose would have expected to be torn apart by the worms. The woman had looked as easy to uproot from her life as the average barnacle is from its rock.

"Are you sure?" she added, "You time lords can heal, right? Maybe loosing an arm wouldn't even kill her."

The Doctor shrugged. Images of the burning city haunted his thoughts. He turned away from Rose, and she thought she caught a glimmer of dampness on his face.

"Doctor, I'm sorry, I just-"

"Don't be sorry." The Doctor's words were hissed, spoken through clenched teeth, "She's dead. It's no one's fault. No one at all except my idiot people!"

He took a big step back from Rose, and hurled the canteen he carried to the ground. The canteen slid across the ground for a few feet before stopping, and the Doctor glared at it. Anger radiated off him. Rose shifted further back into the shadows.

When next he spoke, his voice was low and fast. Rose had to strain her ears to hear him.

"I'd go back, you know. I'd go back, and I'd save them all. I never thought of doing it, never even thought it was possible." The Doctor turned on Rose, and his eyes were wide and shinning, his teeth bared in what was almost a snarl, "But if I could do it now, I would. Save Odjya, my family, my people, and damn the rest."

He took a sudden step forwards and lashed out at the canteen. His bare foot connected, and the canteen sailed out across the dunes.

Rose forced herself out from the safety of the dunes. Her voice was timid, "Doctor, you have to calm down. Think about what you're doing."

"They shouldn't have died. Odjya shouldn't have died. I should have stopped it."

As quickly as it had come, the Doctor's anger evaporated. With the tension gone, he seemed deflated, defeated. His shoulders sagged, and he glanced at Rose with weary eyes.

Rose moved towards him. She placed a hand on his arm, "It's not your fault. Stop blaming yourself."

When he didn't reply, she continued. "Besides, there could still be others here. We haven't checked the beach yet."

The Doctor shook his head. The ache he'd hidden for a hundred years was still as raw as the day he'd first concealed it. There was no escaping it, now.

"There's no one, Rose." He told her, "They're all dead. I really am the last one left."

She tightened her grip on his arm, squeezing harder and harder until he looked at her. Rose caught his gaze and forced him to keep hers.

"You don't know that. You can't know that." She said firmly, "You're just being morbid."

"We tried to genetically modify the desert worms to survive whatever wiped them out in previous attempts." The Doctor said, watching Rose closely to gauge her reaction, "We could have eliminated our own race, or infested thousands of other worlds with those worms, just for a chance to defeat the Daleks. We were so, so stupid."

Rose agreed that it was reckless, but understandable. Was it really so bad to risk everything else just to save what you love? Selfish, yes, but not stupid. And even that last-ditch effort had failed.

"It's worse than that, Rose."

For a moment, the Doctor looked lost for words. He swallowed, flicked his gaze off her, frowned slightly. Rose watched him and wished that the entire fiasco was over. Then she could have her old Doctor back, and no longer have to be witness to that terrible pain in his expression.

"I don't know if anything we produced would actually survive a meteorite, or a flood or drought or plague or whatever happens to them. But they can survive here now. They hatch, they grow up. And they're_ very_ hungry."

"You mean…" Rose let the sentence fall. She didn't have to finish it.

"Yes. They hatched. They were hungry. And they devoured everything around them."

Rose considered this. From what she'd seen of the desert worms, it seemed likely enough.

"But still," she said, "How do you know?"

The Doctor told her about the nest, the eggs, the bits of Gallifryan skeleton. He was convinced that the same fate had befallen any other surviving time lords on Beta, too.

At last, when he was done telling her these awful things, he added, "Do you have the same feeling about this that I do?"

He hadn't been at the last battle for Gallifrey. He couldn't have been, because no one survived it. But there it was, the entire thing, playing out in digital picture quality in his head. A memory that wasn't his.

"That it's all bloody horrible?" Rose guessed.

"There's that." The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her, "And there's something else. Something doesn't seem right about all this."

Rose thought there was nothing right about any of it. She shrugged.

"What're we going to do, anyway?" she wondered, "Are we going back to the TARDIS?"

She hoped the answer was yes. Things could go back to normal there, or at least as normal as they ever were around the Doctor. Rose smiled to herself. First she would be mad at him for making out with the wicked witch of time, then she would forgive him. He did say he loved her, after all. At last!

The Doctor was looking thoughtful. He chewed on an already stub fingernail, sorely missing his spectacles. He didn't bother replying to Rose's query.

"You're going to hit bone soon," she told him, half laughing, "What're you thinking about?"

Yep. She certainly was looking forward to going home. Maybe then she could show the man how to kiss properly; he'd looked damn awkward in the oasis with Odjya.

Her question earned her another raised eyebrow. "Odjya had an awful lot of scars, didn't she?"

"So do I." Rose pointed out a long white scar on the underside of her arm, where she'd slipped and cut herself while slicing her own birthday cake, "So do you, probably."

"No, I don't." the Doctor shook his head.

He showed Rose the smooth, now slightly tanned, skin on his arms. He lifted his grimy shirt, and his stomach was just as smooth. Days earlier, the flesh had been ragged and red from his injuries.

Rose smiled. She liked that flat, hard stomach. It was definitely much easier on the eye than the Doctor's expression of frenzied revelation.

"Earth to Rose," the Doctor called. He tapped her head sharply, "Anyone home in there?"

"Um, sorry. Did you say something?" Rose asked, blushing furiously.

The Doctor gave her a Look. "I just said, I heal. No scars. The healing process is too fast for scars."

"So what?" Rose gave a nonchalant shrug, "Maybe she's just not a fast healer."

"She was an excellent healer. She even healed me, when my hands were burnt." The Doctor held up his hands, palms out, "See? No scars."

Burning buildings, black smoke. People screaming as they were torn apart by unseen forces. Devoured by invisible monsters. There was definitely something out of place about the scene.

"Then maybe she had a lot of big injuries, that she couldn't heal fast." Rose said. She was growing agitated at the waste of time. They could have been well on their way back to Gymnophiona by now.

The Doctor grinned. "Exactly. And you see her head? Lot's of scars. Massive trauma. Probably enough to require regeneration."

Rose frowned. "You know, now that you mention it, a lot of those scars looked new. Last few months. None were faded, or anything."

"Rose," the Doctor stared at her, "You're a genius."

"Yeah, I know. Why's that again?"

"Odjya must have been on her last regeneration, otherwise that head trauma would have given her a new face." The Doctor licked his lips, "And from her scars, we know she regenerated a few months ago."

"What _are_ you thinking?" Rose queried, beginning to catch on.

"She told me that all the Gallifryans on Beta died a hundred years ago, but there was no way that she could have known that. Unless she'd already been to the ocean lab." He mused.

Rose agreed. "She was very sure of where it was."

"When we found that nest, I could tell the bones were Gallifryan. But I couldn't recognise the smell exactly. The smell of rotting flesh drowned it out."

"Flesh doesn't rot for a hundred years." Rose said.

The Doctor gulped. "I don't think Odjya is dead. I think those bones were hers. She's on her last regeneration now, but a severed arm wouldn't kill her. And there were no other bits there to prove that the worm ate her."

"She didn't want us to know that she lived. She would have looked for us." Rose said. Despite the heat, a cold sweat prickled at the back of her neck.

"I'll bet you two weeks on planet Florida that she's gone back to the TARDIS." The Doctor patted his pockets, shirt and pants. The TARDIS key was gone. "All along, she told us that the Rax and the Sycorax were her plan to exterminate the Daleks."

"She lied."

When he really thought about it, the Doctor wasn't sure if there had _been_ a last battle for Gallifrey. The city had fallen, of course. But not in one big hit. And what were those things, swimming just outside his vision? Monsters that destroyed everything in their path, more lethal than the bombs and falling buildings combined. Consuming people, ripping them limb from limb.

Surely that wasn't Dalek technology. Was it?

"This is all wrong," the Doctor groaned, "Things are out of order. This has been what Odjya wanted all along; the Rax and the Sycorax, they're just food. The desert worms are the real weapon."

"What do you think she's doing?" Rose asked, then answered her own question, "She'll have the eggs, and she can get more on her way back. And obviously she needs the TARDIS…"

Amphibians are primitive creatures. They don't judge the time of year by falling leaves or rising temperatures. But a little moisture in the air will send thousand of frogs and newts on a pilgrimage back to their home ponds, to fulfil the need to reproduce.

Their eggs are much the same. Eggs of a Corroborre frog can be lain at any time through the year, but they will never hatch until the Winter wet season, when their nest becomes flooded. Behaviour like this, as foreign as it is to most mammals, is common amongst amphibians.

Certainly common enough to be tampered with.

"In a thousand years or so, there will be a disaster on Beta that will destroy all life." The Doctor said, "Odjya will be going there. Meet the conditions, and the eggs will hatch. If they survive the disaster, they'll grow up big and strong. They'll breed, and eat each other, and breed again. They'll extinguish all life that isn't their own."

"Won't Odjya be killed, though? She won't survive a meteorite." Rose frowned.

The Doctor smiled. "No. And she won't need to. If her plan works, Odjya will be born again on Gallifrey, in six million years from now. And if she's right, and this is the Dalek's home world, there won't ever be a time war."

"Uh huh." Rose nodded. "Is that good, or bad?"

"I don't know. Anyway, Odjya has a whole day's travel on us, now. We won't catch up to her."

Invisible monsters. The Betian Sycorax had a layer of jelly-like skin that reflected light and rendered them invisible. Only by being extremely close to them could you see the muscular black body and gleaming white bone that lay beneath. And usually, if you were close enough to see that, you were dead.

But the Sycorax wouldn't survive a meteorite, or a drought. They weren't adapted to any conditions other than the snow capped mountains. So…

"Doctor, are you alright?"

Rose's face was very close to his. Her eyes were wide, face concerned. Almost frightened.

"Yeah, fine."

"You're looking a little pale, that's all." She was watching him carefully. "Is something the matter?"

But if you were going to make a monster, you wouldn't just give it teeth and claws. Especially not when you could splice and dice its genetic material with other monsters, with other weapons.

The invisible monsters attacking his city were desert worms. Maybe Odjya was right, and the Daleks originated on Beta. But they were never going to be devoured by the worms. They were going to tame them. Weapons of war.

"We have to stop her!" the Doctor cried.

"What?"

If the tone in his voice hadn't been so urgent, Rose might have argued. She also might have cranked a finger around her ear and called him crazy. As it was, she was all ears.

"We have to stop Odjya. Those worms won't stop the time war. They'll end it," he met her eyes, "And we're going to loose."

Rose had the sudden, horrifying image of a million Dalek fleets, exalted after their victory over the time lords, setting off across the universe. Everything would be…exterminated.

"What're we waiting for then?" she cried, "There must be a TARDIS or two a the lab. Let's get over there and stop that bitch!"

A city burned.

xxx

_Drag me off, before I set my world on fire_

_Out and gone, the sun will never set tonight_

xxx

Evening zephyrs tossed small waves against the shore of an otherwise peaceful beach. The white sand was littered with driftwood and seaweed, spiral shells and black pebbles, marking the line of the tide.

A few small crabs scuttled about, watching the intruders curiously with swivelling stalk eyes.

The intruders, however, had no time for crabs or shells or waves.

"Hurry up!"

The Doctor hit the beach a second ahead of Rose. To his left, a low dome building hugged the sand. The dome, once smooth and perfectly round, was now badly eroded on the ocean facing side, worn away by the constant wind.

"Slow down, will you?" Rose cried, trying frantically to keep her shoes from slipping off her shoulder.

It didn't help that she had been given both water canteens, the compass, and a large hunting knife to carry. The Doctor had loaded her up with them on the grounds that he didn't want his hands full if a desert worm attacked.

Rose had just rolled her eyes and agreed.

"Come on!"

Like an igloo, the dome structure had a short arch passage that led to the interior. For whatever reason, the passage stuck out towards the sea, the most audacious of the high tide waves lapping against the thick white columns that held up the arched roof.

The Doctor sprinted around the outside of the dome, hair and shirt tails flying. Wet sand sucked at his feet, small waves crashed around his toes. To Rose, he almost looked as though he was running on water.

"I said wait!" she shouted, struggling to keep up.

He glanced back at her for a second, grinning like a madman, then ducked out of sight into the passage.

Rose slowed to a walk, following him at her own pace. She picked her way carefully around the sharp bits of shell that the waves left behind.

When they'd first seen the dome, it was just a gleaming white speck on the horizon. As they drew ever closer to it and the light was sucked from the sky, the dome became more and more impressive. It almost looked new.

Now that she could see it up close, the structure was forsaken. Molluscs and barnacles clung to the sides. Clumps of beach grass sprouted from cracks, and a weird sort of ivy enveloped most of the low passage way.

"Hello! Anybody home?" Rose shouted, leaning into the passage.

Inside was cool and damp. Limpets and lichen mottled the inner walls black. The Doctor was no where in sight.

"Doctor? You in there?"

Rose could see that the passage stretched out for maybe ten yards, before it became totally obscured in the murky light. The evening sun provided little light.

"This isn't funny, you know!" she shouted, wrinkling her nose, "Where are you?"

No answer. Damn it. With one hand tracing the wall to her left, Rose made her way slowly up the passage. She was betting the Doctor had ran all the way.

"Rose? You want some light?"

"Of course I want some bloody light!" Rose fumed, "I'm not a bleedin' vampire, you know!"

There was the sound of someone laughing softly, muffled by the darkness. Rose squinted, straining to see. It was no use.

"Hold on a minute."

A deafening 'CRACK' rang out in the dome. Rose yelped, then clamped her hands over her mouth in shame. She almost screamed again when light flooded into the room.

Woom, woom, woom. One by one, huge round ceiling lights buzzed into life. Rose found herself cringing against the wall of the passageway, standing barefoot in inch-deep seaweed.

"That better?"

The Doctor stuck his head around the end of the passageway and grinned at her. Behind him, Rose could make out piles of rusted science equipment lining the dome's far wall.

"Much better, thanks." She gave him a quick smiled, "What's all that stuff in there?"

"Come and have a look." The Doctor said, and disappeared back into the dome. Moments later, Rose heard the small hum of the sonic screwdriver.

"I thought you left that behind." She said, gingerly picking her way through the seaweed.

"Nope."

Rose wasn't sure what she had been expecting the lab to look like, but it certainly wasn't this. This was a catastrophe. Computers, hulking steel gauges, benches and metal cabinets were strewn everywhere, bent and twisted and ripped in half.

Everything was ruined, everything was rusted. Most of the destroyed equipment was piled up into conical towers. Glass, metal and timbre, there was no real order to the piles. They reminded Rose a little of a modern art exhibition she'd seen in the London gallery.

"There's a few bones about. No signs of anything living here for years." The Doctor turned away from whatever he was doing to look at Rose. "My guess is that the desert worms hatched here, destroyed everything, and ate what they could. That might have been a hundred years ago."

"Uh huh." Rose nodded. She felt numb.

Despite what the Doctor had told her, she had held firmly to the belief that there could be someone left alive in the lab. Well, that was one theory out the window. The odd gleam of bone amongst the piles more than proved that.

"Try not to think about it, alright?" the Doctor said, regarding her carefully, "I want you to do something for me."

"What's that, then?"

Was that a skull? Rose gulped.

"Have a look around. All the electronic records are destroyed, but there should be a hard copy. Maybe a log book, a journal, anything. We have to figure out where Odjya is going."

"Okay. Um, Doctor?"

The Doctor looked up once again from his work. "Everything alright?"

"What's stopping those worms from coming back?" Rose asked, glancing around anxiously.

"Ah, well. That's simple." The Doctor paused.

Rose looked at him expectantly. "Yes?"

"Yeah. They're not here. Simple."

There was seaweed on the ground here, too, but it was dry and brittle. Rose disregarded what the Doctor had said, and came up with her own explanation. The desert worms needed to keep moist to breath. That explained the seaweed all over the floor; if it was wet, it would keep the worms wet.

But since it was dry, they probably wouldn't come back. This was just an old nest, right?

"Right." Rose told herself. She busied herself with looking for the logbook, to keep herself from picking holes in her theory.

Half an hour later, a cry of; "Eureka!" rang out from where the Doctor was working.

"What? What is it?" Rose demanded, hurrying over to him.

He grinned broadly. "We have a TARDIS."

Rose peered curiously at the object in his hands. It was no more than a wooden box, inscribed with the label '100 Myok Grown Oranges'.

"So what? It's a box of oranges."

"Ah-hah!" the Doctor laughed, "You can read it!"

"I did go to school, you know." Rose scolded.

Then she realised what he was talking about, and slapped a hand against her head. Duh. They didn't teach Gallifryan in school. Only a TARDIS could be translating.

"As soon as you find that logbook, we can get out of here." The Doctor said, beaming. "I'm just going to see if I can reconfigure this thing so that we can get in."

"Why can't you help me look for it?" Rose protested, "You can recon-whatsit that later!"

The Doctor frowned at her. "Don't be ridiculous, Rose. What if those worms come back? We'll need this," he thumped the side of the orange box, "To make a quick escape."

Rose rolled her eyes. It figured.

After another hour's work, Rose was still empty-handed. Finished with the orange crate, which was now twice its original size, the Doctor had decided to help her.

"Check under those cabinets." He instructed, from his perch on the crate.

"I already have! I've checked everywhere!"

"Not thoroughly, obviously. Check under the cabinets again."

Rose let out a frustrated sigh, and ducked down to check under the cabinets. Just like the last three times she'd checked there, there was nothing.

"All clear, boss." She grumbled, getting back to her feet.

Fifteen minutes later, Rose was about to explode.

"There. Is. No. Book." She growled, claws at the ready.

"Just check beside the-"

"There's no flippin' book!" Rose exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. "No log book, o diary, no flippin' read-out chart! Nothing!"

The Doctor had the decency to look sheepish. "Um, actually, Rose-"

"I'm not checking under the bleeding cabinets again!" she snapped.

"No, it's just, " The Doctor scratched his head. "Uh, well. Just behind you, there."

Exasperated, Rose spun on her heel. The line of steel cabinets was behind her. And there, with pride of place on top, was a log book.

"How- what- why- how-" she stammered, mouth agape, "What's that doing there?"

"There all along, I expect." The Doctor said, careful to avoid any eye contact.

"I've checked these cabinets a million times. Under them, in them, on top of-" Rose paused. She hadn't actually bothered to look on top of them, had she? She sighed.

"We better get going. Give us a look at that book." The Doctor said, approaching her.

Rose handed him the logbook. It was unimpressive, just a thick, battered book wrapped in blue leather. The pages were dog-eared and stained, and the gentle arc shape of the volume suggested it was used to be crammed into someone's pocket.

"That's odd." The Doctor said, squinting at the book, "They were recording seismic activity."

"What's so odd about that?" Rose wondered, peering over his shoulder.

"That they found the seismic activity strange enough to record it." The Doctor flicked the book open. He barely glanced at the first page of tall columns, all filled with scrawled numbers and short-hand notes, before flicking to the next page.

Within five minutes, he was done with the book. He didn't look happy.

"What, did they have an earthquake or something?" Rose wondered.

"Not yet. They recorded seismic disturbance once every month for six years." The Doctor showed her the first page, which was totally illegible, "After that, there was a disturbance every two weeks. This continued for fifty years."

"And?"

"And after that, it was every week. Then every day. If this is anything to go by, there should be small earth tremors here a few times a day." The Doctor glanced at Rose, "Have you felt anything?"

"Nope."

"Hm. Probably still not intense enough." The Doctor scratched his chin. "But in a thousand years…"

"I don't believe this." Rose shook her head, "Since when does an earthquake kill everything on the entire planet?"

"It doesn't. But say it triggers one of the largest active volcanoes in the universe. Then you'd have a problem." He grinned. "I think I know where we're going."

"Where?" Rose asked. She had a familiar sinking feeling.

The Doctor's grin only broadened. "Ilium Neocort. Looks like we were right in the first place."

xxx

Planet Beta was surrounded by an altered time-space sphere, designed and coded by time lords to keep out unwanted visitors. Without knowing the entire code, there was only four possible times that a TARDIS could travel to.

Each time was a thousand years apart, and each one was a gamble. Three were times of calm, of quiet and small, sparsely placed life forms. The other was a time of death, mayhem, and utter destruction.

"Odjya was here a thousand years before us," the Doctor mused, "And we know Ilium Neocort hasn't erupted yet."

They were sitting in the orange crate TARDIS, wondering what co-ordinates to punch into the machine's central console.

"Well, it didn't blow up on us." Rose shrugged. "So that's two times down."

The Doctor glanced at her. "I came here once before. There was no life here. There was a rumour that nothing could survive on Beta, and I had to see for myself."

"Did a meteorite drop on your head, or something? Did you drown in lava?" Rose wondered.

"Not that I recall." The Doctor laughed. "So that's it, then. The third time is the one we want."

To be honest, there was things that Rose would have rather done right then. Eat dirt, for instance. Have all her teeth pulled. Invite Odjya over for a slumber party.

"You ready?" the Doctor wondered, giving her a curious look.

"I suppose I have to be."

He smiled at her, patted her hand. "You'll be alright."

Rose watched him walk over to the console. He typed in the co-ordinates as if it was just any ordinary planet. Any normal adventure. Not the extermination of the last chance he would ever have to save his people.

"Are you alright?" she asked, feeling the question was awfully inadequate.

For a moment, he was silent. Then he laughed softly. "Wouldn't mind a banana daiquiri."

The room trembled to life, and the familiar sound of a TARDIS taking off echoed around them. Walls throbbed, lights flickered, much more dramatic than the Doctor's own machine.

As suddenly as it had started, the noise subsided. The TARDIS shook a little, sign of a rough landing.

"This is it."

Without looking at Rose, without bothering to check that the TARDIS was stable, the Doctor strode out through the door. He supposed it must have looked bizarre, a man climbing out of an orange crate, but any light-hearted thoughts left him as soon as he stepped outside.

They were on the slopes of Ilium Neocort, facing down towards the lake. There was no snow, no ice, no sky. The lake was a red pit of bubbling larva, billowing black smoke. All around the land was striped bare, exposing glossy black rock.

"You might want to stay inside, Rose." The Doctor warned.

It was too late. Rose was already out, standing beside him. Her hand curled around his.

"Where is she?"

Rose barely managed to finish the sentence before an earth-splitting roar rose up from the ground. The rock beneath their feet seemed to turned to liquid, and it poured down the mountain, carrying Rose and the Doctor with it.

"Hold on, Rose!"

The Doctor grabbed hold of her wrist, then braced himself against the sucking tide of rocks. By some miracle chance, they hadn't been dragged under.

"Doctor!"

What? The Doctor glanced down. Rose was metres away from him, and rapidly being dragged further down the slope.

He swore. He didn't have hold of her at all!

"Just hold on!" he shouted, treading rocks to stay on top of them, "Just wait!"

God, he needed more time. How had this happened? She was right there, then-

"Rose, no!"

The Doctor stared in horror as Rose lost her balance. She tumbled head first into the river of moving rock and was sucked beneath it.

She didn't come back up.

"Oh God, no."

Rose was gone.

xxx xxx

_Rose dies?! Agh! What kind of sicko am I???_

_Last chapter up next weekend. Eep. See if the Doctor can save Rose!_


	20. Invisible Monsters

_A/N: Ack! I finished! What now? My life will be void!!  
This chapter isn't really funny, unless you count Odjya dying as funny. Then it's freakin' hilarious._

xxx xxx

"No! No! No!"

A rock slid beneath his foot and the Doctor slammed head first to the ground. Sparks danced behind his eyes, but he was back on his feet before the pain registered.

"Rose! Answer me! Rose!"

Everything was black, everything was red. Just breathing was hard work- the air was thick and greasy with a sleet of grey ash. The Doctor gulped mouthfuls of the grimy stuff, coughing and choking and blinking back tears. He scrambled down the nearly liquid mountain face on his hands and bare feet.

The rock was hot, bubbling the skin on his palms. His head was filled with the crackling boom of lightening, white-hot whips that snapped mere inches above him. The air was humid, clogged with ash and vapour from the dissolving ice. The sky and earth were super energised, turning the space between them to a colossal storm cloud.

Thunder as enormous and constant as the crash of a waterfall drown out his screams. Electricity sizzled through his hair and down his limbs.

"Please, no! Please, Rose! Answer me!"

In that nightmare he was suddenly there, suddenly scrambling over the spot Rose had disappeared. The flood of rock beneath his feet had slowed, its heralding buttresses splashing into the lake of fire only yards away.

There was no sign of her.

No stray blonde hairs snared on jagged rock edges, no shreds of clothing offering respite to the hell around him. The Doctor stared at the now motionless spot. The sky was black as night, blacker. Only the evil orange glare of the flaming lake gave him constant light. The rest of the world was revealed in stark black and white by the howling lightning.

This was nothing short of hell.

"Rose! Rose! Please!"

The Doctor coughed, spitting blood and ash. He groped at the rocks before him, pulling some loosing and flinging them into the lake.

He hadn't gotten far when another tremor sent him flying. Hard against the ground then rolling down the slope. The Doctor flung out an arm, dragging himself to a stop. Fire snarled at his feet.

He swallowed, nearly choking on his own ash-gunked saliva, and stared wide eyed at the lake. A black crust was beginning to form on the molten surface. Tendrils of flame and missiles of glowing rock spat from between the cracks.

"It's not- it's not-" the Doctor gulped again. Acid burned his throat and mouth. "It hasn't blown yet. There's still time."

Maybe hours. Maybe not. There could be mere seconds distancing him from the eruption.

No time to waste, then. The Doctor tore his gaze from the fiery lake, back to the slope. Rocks cascaded from the mountain top as the earth shuddered again, but this time the Doctor was low enough to the ground not to be thrown.

He clambered back to his hands and knees. Hand over hand, covering the distance to the place Rose was buried.

There was still no sight of her. No fingers curling up over the barren rocks, no shower of pebbles as she struggled to free herself. In other circumstances he could have sniffed her out, sensed the depth at which she was buried. But now, with his nose and mouth plagued by the filmy ash, this was impossible.

"Rose! Answer me!" he bellowed, shouting straight down into the rocks.

There was no answer, but suddenly the Doctor wasn't listening out for one. He could hear something else. A low wheeze, barely audible over the frenzied boom and crash of thunder.

The tiny grinding of a crystal clockwork engine, a weary groan of ancient wave-length belts, sure sign that the old girl needed greasing. Again.

For a moment he was lost, then the Doctor put a name to the strange noise that was causing him such homesickness.

The TARDIS!

"Odjya!" he shouted, scrambling to his feet.

The Doctor turned, Rose's grave pushed to the back of his mind, and raced back down the slope. His mind buzzed, eyes straining to catch a glimpse of his beloved blue box. Faithful as always, the TARDIS was late.

With one last sigh, the laboured wheezing ceased. Blue strobe light flicked across the lake surface in the brief intermissions between lightening strikes.

Oh no, oh God no. She wasn't.

The Doctor stared in unabashed revulsion as the TARDIS materialised three feet above the lake's black crust. Ten yards from the bubbling shore, a million miles out of his reach. The lava was rising quickly now that an eruption was impending, so a bad landing was an easy mistake to make.

"This is her last hope," the Doctor told himself, "It was no mistake."

He stared on hopelessly as the TARDIS hung suspended for a moment, before plopping wetly into the spitting lava. If she realised where she was, maybe Odjya wouldn't open the doors. Maybe she would take off again, no harm done. Maybe she would-

"Odjya, no! Stay inside!"

Too late. The TARDIS door swung open, pushed hard against the sucking lava. Molten rock slopped up through the opening. The slim figure in the doorway paid it no heed, simply stared down in terrible disinterest at the charred flesh peeling away from her feet.

"Doctor."

He couldn't hear the word, but the sizzling lightening let him see Odjya mouth his name. She was smiling.

"It's not too late! Go back inside!" he shouted, voice frantic. He made a move as if pushing an imaginary boulder to emphasise his point.

No good. It was no good.

Odjya, still standing in the TARDIS doorway, swung a large bag off her shoulder. She seemed blissfully unaware of the lava scorching the flesh from her bones, and the fact that the TARDIS was sinking.

She untied the string that held the bag closed, and drew out a small object. It was an egg, no surprises there. Odjya crouched in the doorway, dipped the egg into the molten lake. Glowing slag dripped off its smooth sides.

This was too much. The Doctor plucked a fist-sized lump of granite from the rocks at his feet, and pegged it overarm at Odjya.

There was a crash of breaking glass as it sailed clear over her head and hit something in the TARDIS. Nothing vital, fingers crossed. Odjya didn't appear to have noticed anything. Every ounce of her attention was on the egg in her burning fingers.

It had cracked. Even as the Doctor watched, a long, narrow body wormed its way from the fractured shell, and squirmed onto Odjya's hand.

"They did it."

He could hardly believe his own eyes. The worm was alive, not harmed in the least by the liquid fire. This was a creature rendered indestructible by even its most deadly enemy.

"Doctor!"

He heard her this time. The Doctor turned his eyes away from the wriggling baby worm, gorging itself on the bubbling flesh of Odjya's remaining arm. She was staring right back at him, smiling to herself.

Seeing that she had his attention, Odjya turned her smiled up a couple of watts. She glanced down at the worm on her arm, then back to the Doctor. The bags slung over her shoulder were lumpy, evidently full of eggs.

"See you on the other side."

Odjya smiled one last time, and stepped out from the doorway. She sunk fast, though not fast enough to stop the Doctor from watching the worms hatch all around her, writhe in and out of her charred skin. Not fast enough to stop him seeing the flames consume her, scorch the flesh til Odjya was little but a skeleton. A nursery of burning bones.

When the last smouldering strands of her hair had been dragged beneath the lake surface, the Doctor dropped to his knees. He shuddered, almost gagged. That was it. In a matter of minutes, he'd lost everything. Odjya, his people, Rose.

This was failure.

He glanced up as the TARDIS let out an agonised bellow. Even his magnificent ship was destroyed. It was well out of his reach. There was nothing he could do to save it, and yet…

"There has to be a way."

He didn't know what, he didn't know how. His entire history was being re-written inside his head. Just boring things, ordinary things, right until the point of the war. Then everything was different, the fall of Arcadia, the last battle for Gallifrey. And after that…nothing.

The Doctor realised with a jolt what that void in his head meant. He died. The Daleks stripped him of his remaining regenerations, and he died. Imagine the misery of a universe without the Doctor! Who would save the humans, the Yymroi, the zlatlotls? Who would stop the Slitheen, the Sycorax, the crazed mannequins? Who would save Rose?

"There has to be a way." He repeated, lifting his head.

He didn't want to die. Neither did Rose. It was up to him to salvage them both.

The TARDIS was completely under now. Lost for good. Just another casualty in this disaster called Beta. The old ship howled beneath the lake's surface. Lava sprayed up in fountains as bits and pieces inside the TARDIS's intricate engine detonated.

Rock showered down the black slopes, and the earth roared as it shuddered again. So that was the plan. Crash the time ship into the centre of a volcano, trigger an eruption. Destroy any chance the Doctor might have of rectifying things.

What might have been hours suddenly plunged to seconds. There was no time left to think.

The Doctor climbed to his feet, struggling to keep his balance on the tumultuous ground. He made his way up the slope, pausing for a moment at the site of Rose's rock tomb.

"I'm sorry," he said. His next words caught in his throat. It wasn't just the ash, it wasn't just his own impending death. "I still love you."

That was it. That was all there was to be said.

He swallowed hard, blinking back tears. And he ran.

xxx

_I met a man locked away_

_For things he hadn't done_

_Innocence on a ball and chain_

_He'll never feel the sun_

_Again on his face or roses_

_In his hands, but when he smiled_

_At me, I could understand_

xxx

"Emergency! Emergency! All passengers please secure yourselves!"

Odjya gritted her teeth and pushed hard against the seat in front. What a way to treat the wartime council! Emergency landing in Gallifrey city indeed!

"They've got some nerve." She grumbled to the man beside her.

"What a weekend this is turning out to be." He muttered in reply.

She could only agree. The twelve members of the wartime council _had_ been enjoying a peaceful conference on Ilibo Eight, when an urgent message-gram from the Galactic Nations had announced that the Daleks had launched the first anti-TARDIS missile on Gallifrey.

This wasn't serious news in itself; they had been expecting it for weeks. But protocol in those circumstances insisted that the wartime council return to Gallifrey (the protocol inconveniently omitted what was to be done if the city in question was under attack) and decide what actions were to be taken.

So then they'd all been bustled into this time forsaken transport ship, conference gone to the wind, any thought of relaxing for the weekend completely abandon.

Odjya sighed. It was typical.

"Emergency! Emergency!" the co-pilot's voice blared over the intercom, "All personal please brace yourselves immediately!"

A quick glance out the nearest of the ship's round windows told Odjya she had little to worry about. There were a few fires scattered throughout the mighty city, but nothing too serious. The transport ship let out a piercing howl and flopped to its side. Odjya stared out the window, to the dusky orange sky. No sign of Dalek war ships. This entire scenario certainly was out of hand.

"What did that idiot say was wrong with the ship?" she queried of the man next to her.

The man, Ycoril, gave a small shrug. He didn't seem perturbed in the least by the ship's acrobatics. "Apparently it's warp trouble. Doesn't sound like anything that should encourage this action: we're not even in _warp_!"

Odjya was thrown against him as the ship went belly up. Only her the seatbelt across her chest kept her from falling to what was now the floor.

"Landing in fifteen seconds! All personal must brace themselves! Twelve seconds!" the intercom bellowed.

"I certainly hope they don't intend on landing us up-side-down." Odjya remarked.

Ycoril chuckled.

There was an onerous groan from the ship's engines as they forced the ship back onto its belly. Odjya's head snapped to the side and cracked against the window. She reeled back, stunned.

The next thing she knew, Ycoril was standing over her, hands on her shoulders, shaking.

"Odjya! Get it together, woman!" he shouted, shaking her vigorously.

"Cut that out." Odjya groaned in reply. She touched a hand to her head, and her fingers came back bloody. Her stomach lurched.

"Listen to me, Odjya." Ycoril stared at her, serious, "There's no time for that. The city is burning. We have to get somewhere safe."

Things hadn't been this serious a moment ago. There were only a few fires, nothing to worry about. Odjya tried to tell him this, and Ycoril just stared at her gravely.

Finally, he spoke. "You've been out for half an hour. Look around."

Odjya looked around cautiously. They were in a - well, it was hard to say. The roof was caved in, and two walls were blown out. The council was crouched in the wedge between the roof and one of the remaining walls.

"We lost Grute." Ycoril told her, "Bastards got him as soon as he stepped out of the ship. They tossed us a mortar bomb."

The time lady swallowed. Grute was head of the wartime council. If he was dead, then they were all in very, very big trouble.

"Where are we going to go?" Odjya wondered. She was acutely aware of how childish her voice sounded. Soft and plump and frightened, just like Odjya herself.

"The college. It's the most secure place within short reach. We can try and contact the others from there."

With that, Ycoril left her. He checked on the remaining nine council members, before peering out around the ragged roof of their small shelter.

"It's clear." He announced after a minute, "Let's go."

The city outside was a world beyond what Odjya had been expecting. Everything was burning, everything was falling down. Steel skyscrapers had bent and toppled like paper clips. Stone buildings lay as piles of rubble. And everywhere, there were bodies.

"Oh God, Ycoril, I can't do this." Odjya stared up at him, a hand over her mouth. This was crazy. Mortar bombs and missiles howled in the sky and assailed the earth below. To wander into that world was nothing short of suicide.

"If you don't, you'll die. Odjya, come on. You can do this."

Ycoril snaked his hand around hers, and drew her out from the shelter. The others had already gone ahead, none of them bothering to take cover.

Even as she ran, Odjya caught glimpses of her fellow council members being destroyed. Lri had half his face ripped off by a mortar bomb, Kyimar was blown to dust by an anti-personal laser. But most terrifying was Ghylly-Tri, who was torn in half as if by some frenzied, unseen beast.

"Don't look!" Ycoril shouted, tugging on her hand.

Odjya screamed when the air around her shimmered, then turned black. A grim spectre, twice her height and slick with sinewy black muscle, crashed down beside her. For two long seconds she stared into a wall of utter darkness, which paled and faded to nothing just a few feet in either direction.

"Come on!"

Odjya let herself be dragged away. Her hearts thundered. More than the fear of the missiles, of the mortars, of the Daleks themselves, she feared that writhing black creature. She was sure she had just seen the hand of death, as he wrecked havoc upon them.

The collage wasn't far away now. It was one of the few buildings unharmed.

Odjya set her eyes on it. She didn't look back. Death was behind her.

xxx

The Doctor ran.

It had taken him a while to find the orange crate TARDIS, half buried in rock and ash. Now that he'd found it, he was running from something else.

There wasn't time!

Tell that to the creature on his ass, though. A bulky adult Sycorax, terrified and dying from dehydration, had decided to take its frustrations out on the Doctor. It snapped and snarled at him, terrible jaws fading in and out of visibility.

"Let up!" the Doctor shouted at it, barely dodging the creature's next lunge.

He cut a sharp left and angled back down the slope. The Sycorax shrieked in annoyance, and charged after him.

Finally, his refuge reappeared. The orange crate TARDIS, not twenty yards away.

The ground shuddered and roared. An explosion shredded the air somewhere to his right. This was it, the volcano was erupting.

For a moment, the Doctor could see Ilium Neocort as it had been, just four gentle, undisturbed white slopes feeding into a bowl lake. Clear blue skies, pale as a shadow on ice.

Then the Sycorax lunged at him from the left, and the image shattered.

"Get off me, you bloody frog!" the Doctor hollered. With the Sycorax on top of him, he rolled down the slope in a jumble of limbs and claws.

At last he managed to free himself from the tangle. He scrambled up, and delivered the Sycorax a sharp kick to the head.

No time to finish it off. Only time to run and pray it didn't catch up.

There was only a dozen yards separating him from the TARDIS, and the Doctor covered it on his hands and feet.

By time he reached the open door, the Sycorax had caught up to him again. The Doctor leapt into the TARDIS, taking the fall impact on his shoulder. He rolled to his feet, caught hold of the tiny orange crate door in on hand, and slammed it shut.

Thwarted, the Sycorax snarled and took its anger out on the TARDIS instead. The time ship rattled a little, but gave no sign of giving in to the assault. Impenetrable, just like it should be.

"About time I got out of here."

The Doctor spoke to himself a little longer, until his nerves calmed. He set the TARDIS into action, not bothering to give it a destination.

Outside, all around the shimmering orange crate, the mountain exploded. A tower of flame blew up from the lake, tearing up pebbles and boulders alike. Avalanches ripped down the four black slopes, spilling into the lake and instantly dissolving.

The TARDIS shimmied out of existence, leaving the Sycorax to spend its last moments in profound confusion. Pyroclastic surges - clouds of searing ash and gas - swarmed up the mountain slopes, incinerating every last living thing.

Boulders the size of houses thundered back to the ground, accompanied by rains of molten slag and soot. Blue lightening whipped the scorched earth three times a second, carbon dioxide, hydrogen fluoride and sulphur dioxide choked the air of an already dead planet.

And amongst this hell, tiny worms writhed and gorged themselves on the destruction.

Nothing could survive on Beta. Nothing perhaps, except the plague called death.

Sitting in a dank corner of the TARDIS console room, the Doctor considered his next move. There were so many things to make right, and only one chance to do it. He didn't have long. The universe has very little patience for a man who continues to live, when he ought to be dead. Already he could feel it pulling at him, coaxing him into oblivion.

"Not yet." He said, as much to himself as the rest of the universe. "Not just now."

The Doctor stood, and drew himself up to his full height. It was time to go home.

xxx

_If you're free, you'll never see the walls_

_If your head is clear, you'll never free fall_

_If you're right, you'll never fear the wrong_

_If your head it high, you'll never fear at all_

xxx

Odjya hit the collage doors and kept running.

Ycoril was beside her, urging her on. Mas and Nycolimi were there, somewhere. The four of them were all that remained of the council.

"The basement!" Ycoril shouted, "It's the strongest point!"

This was a disaster. If they had just stayed in Ilibo Eight, they would have been fine. Eight lives could have been saved. All because of that stupid protocol-

"How do we get there?"

Odjya cringed when she realised the question was directed to her. Of course, she should be leading the way. As a teacher, she knew the collage better than any of the others.

"Uh, straight ahead."

Who could blame her for not being out front? Leaders died first. Odjya could direct the party just as well from the back.

"Second left!" she panted, pointing at a hallway branching off not far ahead.

Mas, now in the lead, spun on her heel and ducked into the hallway. Before the others had a chance to follow, Mas exploded back out into the main corridor.

"Not that way!" she panted, face pallid.

"We- we have to go that way." Odjya stammered, "It's the only way!"

"Not that way." Mas said again, more firmly this time.

Shoulders sagging, Odjya took the lead. There _was _a disused staircase at the end of the main corridor, which led to a storage area. They might be able to get down to the basement from there, time permitting.

"Why couldn't we go the other way?" Ycoril wondered, when the party was on its way again. Jogging this time, as Mas's insistence.

"The Daleks are here."

That one sentence ended all other conversation the group might have had. They jogged on in silence. Chances of anyone surviving were diminishing with every passing second.

Minutes later, they reached the staircase. There was a door, inscribed with the message 'DO NOT ENTER- REPAIRS'. Odjya pushed the door open heedlessly, and stepped back to allow the others to enter before her.

She almost felt as if this had happened before…

There was a scream from the stairwell, then a harsh crackling filled the air.

"Oh, God." Ycoril muttered, stepping backwards into the hallway, "They're there."

Odjya didn't wait a heart beat longer. She ran.

Shouts echoed behind her, and she didn't stop. There was nothing she could do to save anyone, nothing at all. Only herself, and there was only way of doing that.

She ran, shoes clattering. Half way to the main door, she hooked a sharp left and found herself in the student-use stairwell.

Taking the steps two at a time, Odjya soon reached the first basement level. She burst out from the staircase and into a corridor that ran almost parallel to the one above. A second staircase led down into the belly of the collage, the mathematics division.

Odjya sprinted past the classrooms without a sideways glance. No refuge there. A crackle of static let her know the Daleks weren't far behind.

She took another left, to yet another set of stairs. This was the final stretch. Odjya slipped on the top stairs, and tumbled down the rest in a mess of limbs. She crashed and sprawled at the bottom, tears stinging her eyes.

"No, no." her voice was nothing more than a whimper, "Just a little more time."

She could see the round pepper-pot heads of the Daleks at the top of the stairs.

"Exterminate!" they shrieked in chorus, "Gallifryan life found! Exterminate!"

Odjya dragged herself up, and limped to the first of a long line of offices. The door wasn't locked, though she recalled doing so days earlier. Someone had been in there.

The décor of the office was conservative, walls painted a soothing blue-green, just one small plant brightening the far corner. The desk was free of clutter. It was tidy, just the way she liked it.

"Oh gods, please be in here." Odjya murmured, wrenching open the desk's top drawer.

There it was! A book, small, bound in black leather, but otherwise non-descript. Certainly nowhere near as deadly in looks as in content.

She grabbed the book, stuffed it in her pocket. There was a vent at the back of the room, about her waist height. Odjya was always complaining to maintenance that the vent chilled the offices, that maybe they should introduce heating.

Today, she didn't care about the temperature. Odjya tore the grill cover from the walls, and shifted her bulk into the vent. Dalek voices screamed in the hallway outside the door.

Not bothering to replace the cover, Odjya crawled through the claustrophobic vent. It was dark, too dark to see ahead, to cramped to turn and look back. The TARDIS room wasn't far from her office, though.

She didn't have far to go.

xxx

"He's going to think I'm a bloody hobo."

The Doctor tugged at the cuffs of his suit while he grumbled. The pants were too big, the jacket was moth eaten. The tie was positively dilapidated.

"Nothing for it, I suppose."

He'd done his best to smooth his rumpled hair, and a few minutes with a washer and soap had removed most of the blood from his face. The week's worth of beard growth however, and the dirt encrusted under his nails were there to stay.

With a sigh of resignation, the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS. A silent hallway, painted sapphire blue, greeted his weary stare.

After days, maybe weeks, of volcanoes and deserts and blizzards, the hallway was a sight not to be taken lightly. He was home. After so, so long, he was home.

He took a few steps, taking in the view. Home! The one place he thought he'd never see again. Well, one of the places. He'd probably never go back to Utah, after last time. And he might avoid Beta for a century or two. Those aside, though…

"Just a little more time."

The voice came from a room to his left. The Doctor roused himself from his reverie, and glanced at the room's closed door.

_Professor O. Panthea._

"So this is who you were," he mused, reading the name on the door, "Maths teacher. Not bad."

Better get a move on. The universe was getting impatient. Meddling with time, creating a paradox, the ice was wearing thin.

The Doctor wrenched the door open and stepped inside. He looked up expectantly, and his own face stared back at him. At least, it had been his face. Once. Chubby checks, baby fat. And what were those clothes he was wearing!

He almost laughed.

The boy was rummaging through Odjya's desk, just as the Doctor had planned. He didn't stop for this stranger that had entered the room.

"You'll never find it like that." The Doctor said, noticing the boy wince as something sharp cut into his hand.

_It's my hand too,_ he told himself.

"What?" the boy was wide-eyed, terrified.

"For Gallifrey's sake," the Doctor couldn't contain himself any longer. The lad was butchering himself! "Look at what you're doing!"

At long last, the boy managed to retrieve the book. Slim, bound in black leather. Not impressive at all, unless you knew what you were looking at.

" Co-ordinates for all the forbidden planets in the multiverse." The Doctor laughed softly, "Now, what do you want with that?"

He could see the doubt in the boy's face. Fear. Of what? Being expelled? The Doctor was hardly going to jeopardise his own education. Not that the boy knew that, of course.

"I- I- I want to travel, sir."

The Doctor smiled, and slammed his bruised fist into the boy's face. The lad reeled for a moment, arms whirling like pinwheels, then he dropped bodily to the floor.

He stared down at the boy for a moment, before bending to retrieve the book. A few seconds with a permanent marker made the co-ordinates to Beta, tucked away at the back, totally illegible.

The universe pulled hard at him now. Oblivion swam behind his eyes.

It was nearly time to go. There was only one thing left to do.

xxx

_There was a man who had a face_

_That looked a lot like me_

_I saw him in the mirror and_

_I fought him in the street_

_And when he turned away_

_I shot him in the head_

_Then I came to realise_

_I had killed myself_

xxx

Feet pushing against the steel back, hands groping for a hold on the smooth floor, Odjya wreathed herself out of the vent.

She landed in an ungraceful pile in the corner of the storage room. She was badly out of breath from the exertion of the past ten minutes. If she survived this, Odjya was going to have to start working out.

"Beta, Beta, Beta."

Odjya flicked through the little black book, stopping just a few pages from the end. There it was! Co-ordinates for Beta!

With one finger acting as a bookmark, Odjya dragged herself to her feet. Three TARDIS's huddled together in the centre of the room, blipping and wheezing softly. So alive, for machines. Almost as if they knew what was going on.

"Time lord! You have been detected!"

Odjya jumped three feet in the air at the voice. Shrill, crackling, Dalek. Where had it come from?

"Exterminate!"

Uh-oh. Odjya lunged for a TARDIS. The three were all ancient, outdated models, for emergency use only. The co-ordinate panel was located on the outside, and a destination had to be typed in before the ship's door would open.

This was apparently to stop young time lords from flinging themselves into space without first considering where they were going first. An unpopular idea. Strangely enough, however, the TARDIS neutralisers so loved by the Daleks had no effect on the relic machines.

Very fortunately for Odjya, of course.

"Life form detected! Exterminate! Exterminate!"

The static voices were frenzied now. They were right outside the storeroom door. They were-

Plaster and timber exploded outwards, and the entire hallway-facing wall of the room caved in. Light glinted off the smooth dome heads of a dozen Daleks. Guns and probes raised, ready to kill.

Odjya squealed, and dived for cover. A laser singed the air an inch above her head.

"Co-ordinates, co-ordinates," she muttered, turning back to the book.

Her face froze. Where the co-ordinates of Beta should have been, there was nothing but a big black smudge. Spilled ink or seeping marker or… it was illegible. Odjya swore.

She stood slowly, hands above her head. This was it.

No escape, no surrender, no more time.

The lead Dalek aimed its gun arm carefully. Its crackling voice rang out like a shot.

"Exterminate!"

xxx

He found himself in a world of pitch black.

"Where am I now?" he demanded of the world in general.

The bathroom, maybe. It felt to be very cramped. The Doctor stretched, and his fingertips brushed solid wood on either side. Not a bathroom then. A closet. At least that explained the smell.

He pushed the door before him open, triggering a small avalanche of books and paper. Ah, well, that narrowed it down. Not only was it _a_ closet, it was _his_ closet. His bedroom. His TARDIS. That old orange crate would have been absorbed, either by the universe or the TARDIS. Impossible to say which.

"Hullo," he said to his own figure, sprawled out and snoring softly on the bed beside the closet, "What a handsome devil."

Careful not to make too much (more) noise, the Doctor padded out of the room, into the hall. After a few twists and turns, he arrived at the only other occupied room. Well, fingers crossed it would be occupied.

He peered into the room, subconsciously holding his breath.

She was there. Rose! As perfect and lovely as he remembered, blonde hair strewn out on the pillow under her head. And that was that.

Rose was alive, and his work was done.

"You silly old ape," the Doctor smiled at the sleeping figure, "Take care of yourself this time."

With one last look at her, he stepped into oblivion.

xxx

_If you're free, you'll never see the walls_

_If your head is clear, you'll never free fall_

_If you're right, you'll never fear the wrong_

_If your head is high, you'll never fear at all_

xxx

"What was that? What time is it?"

The Doctor groaned. He rubbed his eyes, and stared blearily at the TARDIS relative-time clock on the bedside table. Five am. What a god-forsaken time to wake up.

He shuddered as he remembered what he'd been dreaming. A girl, slim and blonde, drowning herself in lake of fire. Snakes crawling through her flesh.

"Too many of Rose's horror movies," he told himself, and sat up. There was still the matter of what had woken him.

A noise, first feathery and then just loud, from somewhere close by. Probably the closet. Probably the TARDIS was telling him to spring clean.

"Lights on, old girl." He said, climbing out of bed.

Obligingly, the ceiling lights came on. The TARDIS murmured softly to itself.

Sure enough, there was a sloppy tower of books and papers on the floor outside the cupboard. The Doctor gathered them into a pile, and tried to stuff the pile back into the cupboard. A few saucepans slid out of the closet, clattering loudly as they hit the floor.

The Doctor dropped the piles of papers, sighed, and went to pick up the saucepans. Two umbrellas and a toboggan launched themselves out of the depths of the cupboard. A wooden stool and several gallon drums of jelly babies were quick to follow suit. A boogie board he didn't remember buying topped off the pile.

"What _are_ you doing?"

Grinning, the Doctor glanced over his shoulder at Rose. She was standing, hands on hips, in the doorway of his room. Glowering. His grin only broadened.

"What are you wearing those for?" he wondered, referring to her pyjamas.

"I was sleeping," Rose growled. "Like every other normal person is at five in the morning. I came to see what all the racket was about."

The pair of them argued about the noise for a few minutes, before something shiny and blue caught Rose's attention.

"Is that a toboggan?" she wondered, looking tentative.

"An old earth one, yeah. Useless, really. It doesn't even have a turbo." The Doctor told her.

Rose squealed. "I haven't been tobogganing in ages! Could we go, could we? Please?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "I suppose. Or," he grinned, "We could always go to the beach instead."

"The beach?" Rose looked dubious.

"Yeah," the Doctor nodded, "I know just the place. Bahama, the planet."

Rose agreed readily. She couldn't wait to see the Doctor in swimmers. She giggled at the thought of him in Speedos.

"Wait, though," she said, thinking of something.

"What?"

"Are there any monsters there?"

xxx xxx

xxx xxx

_the end_

xxx xxx

xxx xxx

_It's done! Really, really done! My God! Please review, because you'll never have another chance to. Bibliography up soon. It needs one! Also, the new story suggestions will be up there, so give it a look through and tell me what you like. Or don't. But how will I know if you don't?_

_Thanks, thanks, thanks to everyone who reviewed. I love you all!_

_Sax-Hog_


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